365 Days of Starshipping
by Raisalis
Summary: COMPLETE! A drabble a day of starshipping fluff... though it's not really a drabble, the chapters are way too long to be drabbles. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
1. New Beginnings

**_1/1/19_**

A little bit after the defeat of Z-ONE and the prevention of genocide via Meklords, Yusei was greeted with one of the best moments in his life...

...Judai Yuki, flying out of a portal in the middle of his garage at midnight on New Year's Day, looking to be only a year or two older than when they'd fought Paradox.

Now, granted, it'd resulted in a hospital visit the next day since Judai had crashed into Yusei on the way out, which in turn knocked him into some parts, which then resulted in a sprained wrist that Yusei failed to notice in the moment due to the sudden rush of adrenaline from being barreled over suddenly; Judai would apologize with a sheepish grin on his face for days afterwards and help out wherever he could. But still, Yusei considers it to be one of the best moments in his life, because-

-because Judai had sat up after crashing into him, given him one of the brightest, happiest smiles he'd ever seen with sparkles in his eyes, whispered his name and given him the biggest bear hug of his life thus far, and he couldn't stop his heart from pounding when he heard that Judai had come just for him.

It would take some time for Yusei to truly wrap his head around - for goodness sake, Judai'd left behind everything in his time to come here, how could he just do that - but eventually he would.

Kind-of, not really; but he'd stop caring about it because really, all that mattered was that he was happy.

It was the start of something beautiful that day, and Yusei would never take it for granted.


	2. ID

**_1/2/19_**

"You really didn't think this through, did you?" Yusei mused, sending Judai the most deadpan stare possible. The brown-haired boy was smiling sheepishly, though he still didn't look _too_ worried... if at all.

"To be fair," Judai responded, "I already would 'disappear' for months on end during my time, so the fact that I reappeared shouldn't be too much of a stretch, right?"

Yusei couldn't do anything but continue to stare at him - what in the world was that logic? There was a huge difference between months and _20 years._

"...Right Yusei?" Judai somehow exhibited even more sheepishness, and he sighed. The older boy was lucky that Yusei had connections to rather important people, so the problem of Judai being, y'know, a _missing person_ _with no identification_ would be solved after he pulled a few strings and called in a favor or two. However, letting him stew in his embarrassment was amusing so he'd let him worry a bit more.

If, of course, Judai was even worrying at this point. Yusei had a feeling this was going to be a common occurrence and that he'd have to be the one worrying for both of them.

"Come on, say somethin'! Yuuuuseiiiiii-" Judai whined, and now shorter boy was pouting at him, and it was so adorable that his heart started doing flips in his chest and he couldn't help but smile.

"Don't worry. I can fix it, you'll be here legally in no time," he said, reluctantly turning back to his laptop. Work called, after all, and if he wanted to eventually pick up where his father left off he had a lot of studying to do.

"Wait, what? That just leaves me with more questions, don't sound so mysterious bro! Yusei come on-"


	3. ID: Get!

**_1/3/19_**

"Judai, catch."

Fumbling a bit with what was thrown at him, Judai looked down at the ID card and gasped slightly in surprise, "Holy shit Yusei, it hasn't even been a full day."

"Yup," Yusei replied, a small smile forming on his face as he saw Judai gaping at him, "You're in the system now and a registered citizen of Neo Domino instead of a missing person. Your age has been fixed back down to 22, your birth year changed to represent that, and marked as having graduated from the newer duel academy. You officially live here and... well, you get the gist of it. You can participate in tournaments now, by the way."

There was a _lot_ more info that was changed to make it seem like Judai was here all along, but, well, Yusei's contacts seemed very... eager to help him out when he asked. One had said that he doubted he'd ever get to pay Yusei back for helping him out because he was just 'too damn nice' and another was amused that _this_ was the favor he wanted, considering it's rather illegal nature, and teased him the entire time he was gathering details.

Judai gazed at him in awe, and suddenly he found himself falling as he got tackled into a bear hug.

At least this time there was a couch behind him with no parts in the vicinity.

Judai whispered, his forehead buried in Yusei's shoulder, "Yusei, I- There's no way I can ever repay you-"

"Judai, look at me," Yusei said, returning the hug after getting his bearings back. His breath felt like it was taken away when the shorter boy looked up at him, wide brown eyes filled with guarded hope and broken disbelief, and in that moment he knew.

He could never, ever let this precious being go. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt, but there was something connecting them and Yusei was determined to figure out everything about him.

"You existing, being _here_ , is more than enough," Yusei said, looking at Judai straight in the eyes, "got it?"

"...Gotcha," he whispered, and Yusei couldn't help the trill of satisfaction he felt when Judai didn't let go for a long time after.


	4. Synchro What?

_**1/4/19**_

If Judai was going to start dueling in tournaments, he needed to be aware of some of the newer staple cards and, most importantly, how synchro summoning works. So, Yusei got to work explaining everything to him; luckily Judai's attention span seemed to be fantastic when it came to duel monsters, unlike everything else other than food.

"So I need to get myself some tuner monsters and synchro monsters?" Judai asked, biting a nail as he looked down at his and Yusei's decks on the table. They were spread out so they could compare the structures easier, though Judai's extra deck took up a considerable amount of space and it wasn't even all of his fusion monsters - he had some in his side deck and more in the only card box he owned.

"Well, it's really up to you. You'd have to figure out which tuners would go well with your deck and make space in your extra deck for any synchros," Yusei mused, "You might be better off just sticking with what you have right now since none of these cards are on the current ban list. Hell, they'd probably throw your opponents off because fusions aren't widely used anymore, especially not in tournaments."

Judai grinned at him, "Can't wait! Also, half these cards are one-of-a-kind by the way, so they'll likely never make the ban list. It's a long story, but the short of it is that I won an Industrial Illusions card contest as a kid and went through some really dark, crappy, magic adventures to stop the world from ending."

Yusei could only sigh and nod because he related to that single sentence on practically a spiritual level. Unique cards due to magic adventures saving the world?

Stardust Dragon, Shooting Stardust Dragon, and Shooting Quasar Dragon's cards stared up at him as a tangible reminder.

The two shared a glance of complete understanding and sympathy.

Yusei brought out his laptop, showing Judai some of the most common staple cards nowadays. When Judai moved his chair over and leaned on him, he leaned back.

It was a comfort neither had been able to have before.


	5. Instant Ramen

**_1/5/19_**

Judai stared deadpan at where Yusei was in the kitchen.

Did... did he not know how to cook? Did none of the 3 other people living in this apartment know how to cook? All they ever ate was instant ramen, with sides of coffee, coffee, and... oh, more coffee! Did they even have anything in that fridge of theirs or was it empty?

He didn't know, but after a couple days of staying here he was starting to get sick of the instant ramen. Judai, with his bottomless stomach, was getting sick of a type of food. Even Winged Kuriboh was giving Yusei a judgmental stare from where he was perched on Judai's head.

This called for an intervention. He _refused_ to let Yusei, at the very least, continue on with nothing but instant ramen and cheap coffee. That wasn't healthy in the slightest.

 _"Wow, haven't seen you this determined since you first made the decision to figure out how to time jump,"_ Yubel stated. Judai felt her amusement in the back of his mind and had to hold back a snort at the comparison.

As if he'd felt his stare, Yusei turned to look at him at that moment and visibly shivered at the glare being sent his way.

"...J-Judai? Is something wrong?" he asked, looking at him with a hint of trepidation.

"Everything's wrong, all you do is eat ramen," Judai said bluntly, his eyebrow starting to twitch slightly, "I love food but even I wouldn't subject myself to that."

"Ramen's cheap though. We don't usually have much money left after paying rent and doing necessary maintenance on our bikes," Yusei replied, relaxing slightly at the topic, but still nervous about the glare Judai was sending him.

So it was a money issue then? Well, Judai could work with that at least.

"Yusei, when's the soonest possible tournament?"

"...I think there's one in a day or two, the sign-ups end soon though."

"Help me sign up for it, right now."

"O-okay?"

Judai simply pat Yusei on the head and said, "Your misery will end soon, bro. Don't worry."

Yusei was just glad he wasn't being glared at anymore as Judai had switch to glaring at his ramen instead.


	6. Crow and Jack

**_1/6/19_**

Yusei had oh-so kindly brought Judai to the local grocery store after signing him up for the tournament. He had to choose something simple and relatively inexpensive in terms of portion size, so he grabbed the basics for a bulk batch of stir-fry and the pots and pans necessary.

No, they didn't have any pots or pans in that kitchen. Judai felt lucky he didn't have an aneurysm when he went through the cupboards and there was nothing but cup ramen and, thank the gods, plates and silverware. Of course, those looked like they'd been the scene of a dust bunny battleground, so they'd required a thorough cleaning, but at least they were _there_.

Now he was making the food while Yusei attempted to help by cutting the vegetables. They weren't evenly cut, but it was rather endearing to Judai to watch. He left the noodles a bit longer on the stove in favor of watching Yusei, who with a very serious and focused face, had moved on from the broccoli to the onions and was starting to tear up slightly.

It was very cute and he could barely keep himself from laughing.

The sound of a door slamming open almost made Judai drop the pot of boiling water and noodles he was moving off the stove to drain. Quickly, he carefully put it down on the counter and looked slightly panicked over at Yusei, who'd put down the knife and let out a hefty sigh.

"Crow and Jack," Yusei mumbled to him before pinching his brow and preparing to explain who Judai was.

Oh. Right, the two other people who lived here. Yusei had told Judai about them and explained that there was this huge New Year's tournament they'd decided to participate in, but it was required for all contestants to stay in a hotel near the site for the duration. Thus, they hadn't returned until now.

"YUUUUUSEIIIIII, WE'RE BACK FROM THE TOURNA-!"

He heard the distinctive sound of someone getting smacked on the head.

"Shut up Crow, do you want to get yelled at by the people upstairs again?"

"Hey man, you didn't have to- what's that smell? Oh god, is Yusei cooking?!"

A red-head and a blonde suddenly sprinted around the kitchen wall, and met Judai's wide-eyed look with their own. Their eyes quickly darted between him and Yusei.

"...Who the hell are you?!" They both yelled.

Yusei just sighed before putting his hands on the slightly-overwhelmed Judai's shoulders and guiding everyone out to the living room.


	7. Before the First Tournament

**_1/7/19_**

"So how good of a duelist is this guy?" Jack asked, looking down from their special seating box; when you have the King of Riding Duels and the effective Savior of Neo Domino in the same place, you kind of get special privileges.

Though, it was also so that they could watch in peace and not get swarmed by people. It'd been pretty easy to obtain once they'd asked for it.

"Good enough that I have no doubt he'll win this thing," Yusei replied, fiddling around on his laptop.

Jack blinked over at him with an eyebrow raised, "Pretty high praise from you... Did you have to bring that thing with you?"

"I'll put it away when it starts, but Crow's not here to hide it away so I'm getting in some last minute tweaks to the newest section of the Ener-D project before we start testing it." Unfortunately, Crow was straight back to work after getting back, but he said he'd be watching the tournament whenever he could get access to a TV and wished Judai good luck with a pat on the back. Jack still didn't have a job, considering he was sitting on a rather full bank account and was the King of Riding Duels, while Yusei did a lot of work from home. The Ener-D reactor needed a lot of updating in terms of _literally everything_ before the physical site could be used again.

However, now that he'd been distracted, Yusei was back to thinking about Judai. Before they'd left the apartment, Yusei had noticed he seemed slightly on edge. When he asked if he was nervous, Judai had looked over at him and hesitated for a few seconds before replying slowly.

"Not... nervous, so much as, I dunno- it's hard to describe," he said, looking away at the ground. He bit his lip, seemingly debating whether or not to tell Yusei this, but then continued, "I've done a lot of things I regret. It all had to do with duel monsters, and at some point dueling became something I did because I had to, not because it was fun. But... but now, for once, I'm kind of... looking forward to it? With all these new strategies, all these new monsters, it's- it's exciting."

And Yusei understood, because although he didn't know exactly what Judai went through, he still, at some point, had felt that same crushing regret. Had dueled because he had to. Had kept going and fighting because he had to, not necessarily because he wanted to.

Had felt guilty when he started to move past all of that. He still hadn't fully moved past it, but he understood the guilt Judai was feeling.

So he took Judai's hands in his and squeezed them gently, causing him to look up in question.

"It's okay to be happy, Judai," Yusei said softly, but surely. "It'll be hard to accept, and you'll never forget the pain of everything that's happened, but feeling excited for duels, being happy about life... it's okay to feel those things."

Judai stared silently for a bit after, but he'd smiled a small, genuine smile eventually and nodded.

"I'll try," he whispered, and it was really all Yusei could ask for.

"It's starting, put the laptop away you nerd," Jack said, breaking Yusei out of his reverie and making him smile.

It was time to see Judai duel. He hadn't been able to truly see how he dueled when they fought Paradox, but now he would get to and it was sure to be interesting.


	8. Finals

**_1/8/19_**

Judai was happy. Dueling against synchros added a whole new level of difficulty to the game, and thinking of ways to get out of their abilities and destroy them was challenging in a way that Judai hadn't experienced in a non-life-threatening duel in _years_.

It felt liberating, because he felt for once that having fun with these duels was okay. He wasn't using his full deck, considering it was far too overpowered (aka Yubel) and he didn't want to give away all the tricks up his sleeve, but it meant that the duels were more challenging and forced him to use different strategies.

"It's now time for the finals! Whoever wins this duel will take the grand prize of three hundred thousand yen and the chance to participate in the esteemed Spring Blossoms Tournament in April! Finalists, you have five minutes to switch out any cards with your extra deck!"

Judai hummed, looking down at his deck before grinning up at Winged Kuriboh who'd once again taken to lying on his head.

"Well, if we're planning on having some more fun with this, then how about we go back to our roots? What do you say, partner?" Judai said, and Winged Kuriboh cried back happily in agreement. After a few moments of deciding which cards to take out, he swapped in two cards from his extra deck that he hadn't used in a long time, before stepping out to the field.

Just before the duel started, he looked up to where Yusei sat and gave him a smile and a wave. He saw Yusei give him double thumbs-up in return, which only made him smile wider.

The other duelist was quick to pull out a bunch of synchros that cleared Judai's board with their effects and within a few turns, Judai was left with an empty board against 4 high power monsters with well over 2500 attack each. However, his opponent didn't have a back row anymore, having used it to pull out his monsters through gratuitous use of search spells and traps to bring his tuners back from the graveyard, and he didn't have anymore cards in his hand.

It was perfect.

"Draw!" Judai exclaimed, smile still there to the disbelief of everyone else in the stadium. "I summon Winged Kuriboh in attack mode, then place one card face down and end my turn."

"Oh no, Judai seems to be in a pinch! Is this it for him?! He's only got 2000 life points left, and his opponent still has a full 8000!" The announcer yelled, hyping up the audience. Judai had to keep himself from smiling wickedly, barely keeping it normal in his excitement.

"Draw!" His opponent yelled. "That Winged Kuriboh of yours may save you for this turn, but it still gets destroyed! Angel of Zera, attack Winged Kuriboh!"

 _Now_ Judai let himself grin wickedly.

"I activate the spell card Transcendent Wings! By sending one 'Winged Kuriboh' on my field and two cards from my hand to the graveyard, I can special summon 'Winged Kuriboh LV 10' from my deck!" Judai said, quickly placing his upgraded partner on the field. It had been so long since he'd pulled this combo off on someone, but doing so filled him with pure glee.

"My attack still goes through though-!"

"Nope, not anymore! I activate Winged Kuriboh LV 10's effect! During my opponent's battle phase, I can tribute it to destroy all attack position monsters you control, and you take damage equal to their combined original attack!"

"What?! What the hell is that card?! NOOOOOO-"

His opponent had no possible counter, and the sound of his life points hitting 0 was beautiful.

"Gotcha'! That was a fun duel, bro!" Judai winked, giving his signature two-fingered salute.

"A-An OTK?!" The announcer yelled, the entire stadium bustling in excitement, "H-he pulled off a clean turn-around in a single turn and won! Everyone, the winner of the New Year's After Party Tournament is Judai Yuki!"

Up in the viewer's box, Jack was gaping down at the field and Yusei was grinning like he was the cat who caught the canary.

"Winged Kuriboh LV 10? What the hell?" Jack asked, "Isn't that from like, years ago? Same as those Elemental HEROs he was using, though I don't think I've ever seen that archetype in particular listed in a card list before, and I've had access to years of card lists."

"Yup," Yusei replied, "And those Elemental HEROs are to Judai like Stardust and Archfiend are to us."

"Ah. You still haven't fully explained who he is, you know."

"He'll do it when he's ready, it's not my place to tell," Yusei said before standing up and grabbing his laptop. "Right, it's about time for me to collect my winnings now."

"...Yusei?! YOU BET ON JUDAI?!" Jack yelled in shock.

"There's no need to yell-"

"You never bet, what the hell- wait, HOW MUCH DID YOU BET?! Hey, get back here! Don't walk away from me mister-"


	9. After the Tournament

**_1/9/19_**

"I can't believe Yusei actually bet," Jack grumbled, still in slight disbelief, "and he didn't just bet, but he bet the _entirety of our savings_."

"Yusei did what now?" Judai asked, blinking owlishly at Jack. He'd finally joined back up with them after confirming with the tournament staff that his winnings had been transferred to his brand new bank account, and they were leaving through the back entrance to avoid the crowd.

"To be fair, we needed the money and I had full faith that you'd win," Yusei defended, "So it was a pretty easy decision to make. Now it can sit in a savings account and add up more than it would've before."

"Huh, now that's something I can get behind."

Jack groaned, "No, don't encourage this. Judai, he shouldn't be doing such stupid, idiotic things-"

"It worked though, didn't it?" Judai grinned, "I don't see the problem there, besides... there's no way I'd have lost a duel to any of those guys. And you guys uh, really do need the money." Judai grimaced just thinking about the instant ramen in those cabinets; cheap instant ramen would haunt his stomach for days.

Jack just kept grumbling and was now giving both of them dirty looks.

Judai clapped his hands once they got to the parking garage, "So, Yusei, first order of business - grocery store. Now."

"Okay, okay, I get it," Yusei said, smiling a bit, "I won't subject you to our horrible eating habits anymore. Jack, we'll see you later, got it?"

A grunt was all they got before Jack was speeding out in a white blur.

Judai, unable to hold it back anymore, finally broke down laughing at his antics, "O-oh man, that guy, he's almost exactly like this one guy I used to know- oh man- haha! That was hilarious! He really has a flair for the dramatic!"

"That he does," Yusei agreed, smiling fondly at him. Judai ended up leaning on him while he caught his breath from laughing so hard.

After a minute, Yusei asked quietly, "So, did you have fun?"

Judai looked up at him and grinned, because he could honestly say, "Yeah... yeah, I did. Thanks, Yusei."

His heart pounded in his chest when Yusei smiled down at him and replied, "No problem. I'm just glad you're happy."

 _"You've got it bad,"_ he heard Yubel smirk in his mind. Even Haou had decided to pitch in with some chuckles.

He cursed both of them and felt like dying of embarrassment when they both just laughed at him more.


	10. Oddities

**_1/10/19_**

" _...Judai."_

Was that Haou? Judai blinked in surprise, but put down his soda just in case. If Haou was deciding to speak up, it was probably for a good reason.

" _I thought of something... odd. If Yusei is this generation's King of Games, then he should be able to see duel spirits, right?"_ Haou asked. " _Yugi could do it, even after the Pharaoh was gone, and you've been able to since you were little, so Yusei should logically be able to as well."_

That was a rather good point. Judai frowned before taking a closer look at Yusei, who was back to focusing all his attention on his laptop, although this time he had a mug of warm tea - and _not_ the cheap stuff, at Judai's insistence, considering it was his own money - next to him. At Haou's urging, he channeled a bit of the gentle darkness combined with a bit of Yubel's power through himself to connect to the spirit world, which let him see duel energy. It was something they'd discovered accidentally and had taken a lot of practice to master, but the results were well worth it.

Judai sucked a breath in through his teeth at what he saw, and he could feel both Haou and Yubel do the equivalent of mentally tripping over their feet.

Yusei was positively _leaking_ duel energy. Said duel energy was dispersing almost immediately after leaking out, too, so even though Yusei _should_ have more than enough to see and materialize duel spirits, he didn't because whenever he made any it disappeared immediately.

" _What the hell? Is it just me or is it spinning around him?"_ he heard Yubel mutter, and now that he looked at it... Yeah, it _was_ spinning all in the same direction around him just before dispersing.

"Yusei," Judai said as levelly as he could at the moment.

"Give me a minute-"

"-No, Yusei, look at me."

Yusei looked annoyed for a second, but the second he turned his head and saw Judai's eyes had changed color and that he was sporting an unusually serious face he just looked worried.

"Judai? What's wrong?" Yusei asked.

"Does spinning duel energy ring any bells for you?"

He blinked before nodding, "Yes, it's the basis for the Ener-D Reactor. It powers the whole city, and the project I'm working on right now is getting the original reactor to work again. Ener-D, or duel energy, is sometimes referred to as Momentum in certain circles due to the continuous spinning. Why?"

Interesting. So it was the basis for powering the whole city? And Yusei was working on the original?

That still didn't answer _why_ his duel energy was acting like that, unless- aw, crap, with their track record in terms of 'impossible magic deciding to screw with them', that was a very plausible option.

"Is there _any_ chance you were heavily exposed to it as a child?"

"...Y-yeah, apparently when it exploded I was in the facility, but my parents somehow saved me by getting me out in time. Judai, how the hell did you know to ask that?" Yusei asked, looking stunned.

Judai bit his lip before deciding to just go for it. "Don't freak out, but your duel energy is perpetually leaking out of you at the same rate you're regenerating it, and it's all spinning in one direction right before disappearing."

"...What?!"


	11. Original Reactor Site

_**1/11/19**_

After that revelation, Yusei decided it was probably best to just show Judai the site of the original reactor; it would be a great place to start if there was anything there for them to use.

And find something they did.

"There's so much duel energy just floating everywhere, Yusei," Judai said lowly, "It's... unnatural. The only time I've ever seen this much just floating around was when there was pretty much war in the spirit dimension, and it's not a good thing."

"Remember what I said about Zero Reverse? It changed the landscape completely, it was a devastating event," Yusei replied, "It's not really surprising to think there's still issues with this place. It's been closed down and I'm the only one who's gone through it recently, considering I wanted to lay out new site plans."

Judai hummed, still looking out at the huge rundown building in front of them, "Well, let's go see the actual reactor, there's bound to be something there if it's this bad outside the building already."

Two steps into the building, the duel energy practically latched onto Yusei, and Judai hissed. That was the _last_ thing they needed, Yusei getting his core more corrupted by whatever this was.

See, every person had a core where they made and stored duel energy. Most people didn't have much, but psychic duelists and anyone who's had contact with the spirit world or any dimension of it tended to have larger reserves and stronger cores. Then, you have the Kings; the Pharaoh, Yugi, Judai, and now Yusei. Generally, their cores are representative of their status, boasting significantly larger reserves, magically enhanced cores, and the automatic ability of cutting off duel energy usage before it reached a critical level; this meant they would never use so much that they couldn't see spirits anymore. Sure, they wouldn't be able to materialize them anymore, but they'd still be able to _see_ them.

How did Judai figure out so much? Well, after the fight with Paradox, he'd looped back around the world and sought out Yugi of course, and after revealing that he'd just gotten back from that fight, had spent a long few months researching magic and the spirit world with him. Granted, Yugi did most of the math and science aspects of it, Judai just did the physical parts that required his specific powers, but it was still very enlightening.

Quickly, Judai grabbed Yusei's arm, pulling him close and flaring out his own energy. The corrupted duel energy backed off and soon enough there was a little bubble of clean space around them.

"Judai?" Yusei asked, slightly flustered from being pulled close so quickly.

"Stay close to me, it wants to latch onto you. Is this reactor sentient or something? This is the weirdest I've ever seen duel energy act, it usually doesn't latch onto things, let alone know to back off from foreign energies. It's supposed to be _neutral_."

"I mean, the other reactor was apparently sentient enough in a separate timeline to create Meklords to commit genocide...? I had to divert it's energy to the surrounding cities so that it would never gain enough sentience to lash out."

Judai groaned. Great, it _could be_ sentient.

"Just... just explain on the way there, let's go," Judai sighed, pulling Yusei a bit closer when the duel energy around them tried to latch on again. At least the bubble stayed around them, though Judai was positive that the second he let Yusei and go and couldn't channel his own duel energy around him so easily the corrupted energy wouldn't hesitate.

Oh well, look at the bright side of things - at least it gave him an excuse to hold him close.


	12. Solution Discovery

**_1/12/19_**

"Here it is," Yusei mumbled, the stifling atmosphere of the reactor site having gotten to both of them while they walked through it. It wasn't as bad as other things they'd experienced, but it was still worse knowing the place was semi-sentient.

The reactor room was huge, but it was also completely wrecked. The walls were scorched and burnt and the machinery for the reactor itself, though still standing, had clearly been untouched since the explosion.

Judai saw a different story, however.

"It's still trying to work," he said, looking closely at the reactor, "the duel energy is spinning very, very slow circles around it."

"Really? It shouldn't be able to do anything without any power, this place was disconnected from any power lines a long time ago," Yusei frowned, trying to think of anything that could help. He felt kind of useless in this situation considering the magical abilities involved in it, though maybe...

"Judai, I have an idea," he said, going through what he knew about the machine, "but we're going to have get close enough for me to break some parts off."

"What? Why?" Judai glanced over at him, clearly not liking the idea. "That thing's already done _something_ to you, there's no way I'm letting you get _closer_ to it, let alone _touch it_."

"Judai, what if it has it's own core? You won't be able to see it unless I strip away all the parts surrounding the heart of the machine where the main power units that connect it to the city are," Yusei responded, looking determinedly back at the shorter boy, "You might figure something out if you compare it's core to mine."

"But-"

"-besides, I trust you not to let the corrupted energy get too close, okay? I trust you, Judai."

Judai bit his lip for a moment before relenting, "Alright, okay, I don't like this but- fine. I won't let you down, Yusei."

Yusei smiled at him, tightening his grip on the boy for a second in thanks, before they walked over to the machine. He got to work stripping away the layers, making sure he didn't break anything more than it already was. Scrap parts could still be used for something, after all, and the machine was going to be rebuilt eventually anyways. He could feel Judai fidgeting next to him, his grip tightening every once in a while when Yusei had to reach further away to get rid of a bolt or screw holding a part in place.

Soon enough, however, the center was exposed.

Judai blinked at it before giving him a grin, "Well, looks like it was worth it after all. You were right, it does have a core. Good job, Yusei, I never would have thought of that."

"Just glad I could help," Yusei replied, looking away slightly in embarrassment. Judai was still as cute as ever, and Yusei had to stop himself from going further down that line of thinking by reminding himself that they were in a possibly dangerous situation... where Judai was voluntarily holding him close to keep him safe and happy that Yusei was clinging onto him in turn.

Crap, that was _not helping._

Judai broke him out of his thoughts, luckily.

"I think I figured it out!" he said excitedly, "When you were a kid, it left an piece of itself on you - it's so obvious now that it's core is right in front of me, it's the exact same signature as the corruption surrounding your core - and because of that as you grew older, your core developed normally but worked according to the piece's instructions, which told it to expel the energy from it's source and spin it! However, because duel energy can't survive by simply being outside the core, unlike with the reactor where it stayed because of all the special equipment designed to keep it in the room and the fact that it was being semi-controlled and kept in this world by the reactor, it dissipates almost immediately, leaving you with nothing!"

That was a lot of word vomit to Yusei, considering the speed at which Judai was talking, but he got the gist of it.

"So... can you fix it?"

"Yup! I just have to extract the piece from your core and put it back in the other one, then the latent duel energy in this place shouldn't try latching onto you anymore and you should be able to start storing duel energy again. I couldn't just extract it beforehand because it would just latch right back onto you, but with it's original source here it won't do that. But, uh..."

"What is it?"

"...It's not a fun process. It's going to fight me, considering it's been linked with you for so long, and you're going to be in a lot of pain for as long as it takes me to get rid of it," Judai admitted, looking away nervously.

Yusei let go of him with one hand so that he could turn his face back to look at him. Judai's eyes glowed in the dark as he was still using his powers, but now there was unconcealed worry and fear in them.

"Judai, like I said earlier, I trust you," he said, "If that's what needs to happen in order to solve this, then so be it. Do you trust me?"

"Of course I trust you, but-"

"-then trust me when I say I'll be fine," he continued, not letting Judai look away from him again.

"...Okay. I trust you," Judai whispered.

Yusei smiled happily, "Good. Now, tell me what you need me to do."


	13. Duel Spirits

**_1/13/19_**

 _'Thank the gods that the process only needed Yusei conscious at the beginning...'_ Judai couldn't help but think, looking down at Yusei, who'd passed out about twenty seconds ago. He'd almost lasted through the entire process, considering Judai almost had the entire piece of corruption separated from his core, which was actually kind of amazing and showed that Yusei had either a high pain tolerance or extremely strong willpower.

Once it finally separated a few minutes later, Judai practically flung it over to the reactor, where it quickly reattached to it's original core. Almost immediately, the duel energy in the air stopped hounding the two men on the ground and instead started gathering around the reactor core.

When it became apparent that they were safe now, Judai studied Yusei's core. Sure enough, it was slowly filling back up; no more insane leakage other than the normal amount King's exude, no more spinning duel energy, it was fixed.

Suddenly there were a bunch of bright colored blobs in his face and he fell backwards in shock.

" _YUSEIIIIII-"_ a squeaky voice yelled, and was that the sound of metal clanging together? Judai rubbed his head as he sat up, looking at the three duel spirits that had suddenly appeared - they had to be Yusei's.

" _Synchron, hold on! He's not even awake, he might not be able to see us!"_ the pink bird said, flapping their wings around worriedly.

" _But we couldn't even materialize before as spirits! It must be a sign!"_ the brown fluffy mole said excitedly, floating around Yusei, who was slowly starting to stir from all the noise.

"Is that why I've never seen any of you around him before? You couldn't even materialize as spirits before I got rid of the reactor's influence?" Judai asked, bringing the duel spirits' attention to him. At this point Winged Kuriboh had decided to join the party, flying happily around them before settling on Judai's head.

" _You fixed it?! We'd noticed the cling-on when we were summoned for duels, but we couldn't tell him about it or do anything on our own,"_ the little robot with a scarf said, his eyes practically sparkling at Judai, " _Thank you so much mister!"_

 _"Yeah, thank you!"_

 _"Thank you so much..."_

"Aw, it was nothin'- besides, I think he's waking up," Judai replied, grinning at how eager they were to get to talk to Yusei after years of not being able to.

"...Why do I feel like I just got run over by a truck...?" Yusei groaned, slowly squinting his eyes open and sitting up. He took a moment to blink, surprised at the new additions to the room.

"...Junk Synchron? Sonic Chick? Quillbolt Hedgehog?" he asked, eyes wide as all three teared up and jumped at him.

" _Yusei can see us! Yusei can see us! Finally!"_ Synchron cheered, zipping all around Yusei. Sonic Chick was too happy to speak, instead squealing while continuously flapping her wings around. Quillbolt Hedgehog just flat out jumped into his lap and was hugging him the best he could as a duel spirit.

Judai smiled softly at the heart-warming sight, his heart melting when Yusei finally registered what was happening and began to laugh happily.

...And _damn_ , Judai do anything to hear that sound again, because Yusei's laughter was beautiful.


	14. Lively Home

**_1/14/18_**

"They definitely look happy," Judai said, smiling at the scene before him. Yusei's three duel spirits were zooming around the couch chasing after Winged Kuriboh, who was happily flapping his way ahead. Meanwhile, Judai and Yusei were sitting in the middle of that chaos on said couch, watching their spirits have fun while Crow and Jack argued over something in the workshop part of the living room.

Yusei hummed in agreement, sipping on his mug of tea so that he could be doing something with his hands - Judai and Crow had been teaming up the last few days, dragging him away from his computer to the other corner of the room, but they'd also quickly learned to shove something in Yusei's space to fiddle with since it would keep him from getting too work-antsy.

Granted, Judai was the same way and was nursing his own bottle of soda; Yusei really didn't think drinking caffeine would help him later on, but as long as it satisfied the older boy, he'd go along with it.

"You find any more tournaments to duel in?" Yusei asked, settling a bit further into the couch. It wasn't the comfiest couch ever, but it served well enough and had plenty of pillows to make up for it.

"Yeah, I think I found one - considering I'm listed as an 'Advanced' rank now thanks to how well I did in that first tournament, there's a lot more options available," Judai replied, pulling out his phone. "Here, look. What do you think?"

Yusei leaned on Judai, looking over his shoulder slightly at the phone and reading the details while taking another sip of tea.

"...Looks good to me. I don't think this one gets broadcast on TV, but the prize is good and some of the already confirmed contestants are rising stars; beat them and your rank will probably rise again," he eventually said.

"Cool! I'll sign up right now then, thanks Yusei," Judai grinned, pulling up the sign-up page. Yusei stayed where he was so he could watch and make sure he was doing it correctly.

Unknown to the two on the couch, Crow and Jack had stopped arguing and were instead staring at them with calculated looks.

Eventually Crow piped up, "Bet you a thousand yen they get together."

"...I'm not so stupid as to take a losing bet," Jack grunted out, giving Crow a deadpan stare. Crow just grinned at him unashamedly, proceeding to pull out his phone and snap pictures of the two.

"What are you doing?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Crow glanced over, an evil look glinting in his eye, before explaining.

"Yusei's practically our younger brother in all but blood, Jack," he said lowly, careful to make sure the two on the couch couldn't hear him. Of course, he didn't actually need to worry considering the ruckus their duel spirits were making, but he couldn't have known that. "It's practically our duty as older brothers to embarrass the crap out of him, and part of that is showing the most embarrassing slideshow of pictures ever when the wedding happens."

Jack blinked before grinning wickedly and raising his own phone up. "Y'know, it's times like this that remind me why this little dysfunctional family is _fantastic_ ," he said, and soon both he and Crow were cackling quietly together.


	15. Tour of the City

**_1/15/19_**

"Yusei... come on, you never gave me a tour of the city and now that your duel spirits are here you have double the reason to, please?~"

Faced with the almighty power of five sets of adorable puppy eyes, Yusei accepted his defeat quickly and tossed Judai a helmet to wear. A multitude of cheers accompanied the toss and he sighed in resignation.

At least they were happy - he'd have to work on his projects later.

Soon enough they were speeding through the city, Judai laughing in joy behind him. His motorcycle was still ever so slightly too small for two people, so Judai had to wrap his arms around Yusei to get comfortable. At this point Yusei couldn't decide what was more distracting - Judai hugging him tightly from behind or Judai's laugh sounding throughout the communication line.

Eventually he just settled on Judai being distracting, period.

Judai wasn't the only one laughing, though, and he smiled fondly at the duel spirits flying besides them. Winged Kuriboh stuck around most of the day now to play with Junk Synchron, and though Sonic Chick and Quillbolt Hedgehog were significantly more calm than those two, they still came around everyday at some point to hang out. All four were giddy at the moment however, drinking in the sight of the city and excited by how fast they were going.

"It amazes me how much a city can change in only twenty years," Judai admitted, still grinning in excitement, "There's so much new stuff here! So much technology! It's so awesome!"

Yusei hummed in agreement, thinking of what he'd been able to see of the city in Yugi's time; it really had changed a lot from then and that was even further back, a thirty-five year difference. Technology truly was amazing.

"You guys really duel on motorcycles? You think we could find someone to duel? How does that even work anyways, are there separate lanes or something?" Judai asked, looking curiously down at a lower lane where two people had monsters and cards floating next to their bikes.

"The lanes being used for duels get closed off temporarily - it's why there's so many streets and layers throughout the city, because half of them end up closed at any one time," Yusei replied, "There's also separate courses but you have to reserve those, they're generally used for practice by teams. And if you want, I can ask Jack or Crow if they'd be up for a duel. Jack at least would probably be ecstatic to have something to do today."

"Sweet! I can't wait - dueling on motorcycles, who would've thought?!" Judai exclaimed, and Yusei coughed as the arms around his waist tightened as a result.

"Judai- air, please-" he said, struggling with the words. It was a reminder, if anything, that Judai was _far_ stronger than he looked.

"-whoops, sorry! I'm just so excited!"

"Don't worry about it, I understand. I still remember the first time I saw a riding duel, I thought it was pretty amazing too."

"Man, now you're making me remember the first time I dueled with holograms! It's obviously not as cool as the solid vision you've got here but-"

And so they went, laughing as they shared stories. At some point Judai laid his head down on Yusei's shoulder, both of their helmets off as they looked out at the city from where they'd stopped to wait for Jack; he'd finally messaged them back with a very long text that went along the lines of 'Who do you think I am, of course I'm dueling you, I have to prove I'm still the best! I'm the King!'

Judai had snorted at that, mumbling something about kings that Yusei couldn't quite make out, but he was still amused regardless.

"Huh, so you have to get separate spells for riding duels because of the speed counters?" Judai asked.

"Yeah, luckily they're not very hard to come by. There's sets of cards dedicated to riding duels so it's accessible," Yusei replied, looking down at his cards to go through them one more time. The system wouldn't let a non-speed spell card be in the deck anyway, popping it right back out if one's there, but it was easier to just double-check beforehand.

" _Judai, Yusei, can Winged Kuriboh duel with us? Please?_ " Junk Synchron asked, floating back over from the little field of flowers that the spirits had been playing in. Winged Kuriboh came with him, evidently wanting to as well from the cries he made.

"It's cool with me. Yusei, you fine with that?"

"Sure, sounds fun," he said, smiling at the two duel spirits and taking the card when Judai held it out for him to take.

Yusei felt his heart pound in happiness that Judai trusted him enough to give him his partner's card to use temporarily, vowing not to let him down.


	16. Tag Duels Maybe?

**_1/16/19_**

"Man, those speed spells are tricky to use! I still don't quite get what happened, but you won at least," Judai said, flopping onto the couch and stretching his legs out. Going at super high speeds was fun, _dueling_ at super high speeds was fun, but for someone not used to riding a motorcycle for so long it was killer on his legs.

"I only won because Winged Kuriboh gave me the extra level I needed to summon Junk Archer," Yusei replied, setting his helmet down on the desk before wandering into the kitchen. "Want anything?"

"Just some water, thanks."

Nodding, Yusei went out of Judai's line of sight. Judai hummed, closing his eyes for a bit to think over the duel. Seeing Yusei duel was something he'd only seen twice now, as apparently he only really dueled if someone challenged him officially for his title; he wanted to focus on what he explained to be the project his father had worked on before he died, as it would help the city.

Now that he was starting to have some fun again, he really wanted to try dueling Yusei, though some other part of him really wanted to duel _with_ Yusei-

-huh, now that's an interesting idea-

"Judai, here you go," Yusei said, breaking Judai out of his thoughts. He opened his eyes and grabbed the water, muttering a quick thanks before draining half the bottle.

"Don't be surprised if your legs are a bit sore for a few days, you're not used to riding for so long yet," Yusei mentioned, giving Judai a sympathetic look. There was no doubt in Judai's mind that he was speaking from experience.

"Eh, I heal fast. I should be fine by the end of tomorrow if that's the case," he replied, thinking of all the time he had spent travelling. The good thing about his powers was that it came with a stamina boost and slight healing factor, so he was never out of commission for too long.

Yusei joined him on the couch, sitting with a slight huff. A comfortable silence fell between them as they sipped their drinks, both enjoying the moment of peace after an exciting day. All of their duel spirits had gone back to the spirit world to rest, so there was no background chaos for once.

Eventually Judai spoke up, going back to his earlier thoughts, "You guys still have tag-duel tournaments, right?"

Yusei tilted his head towards him, replying with an affirmative hum before explaining, "There's not as many, but on the other hand any rank of duelist can participate. Generally higher rank duelists join in, but considering they're more for fun than anything else plenty of lower ranks sign up with friends. They try to match higher ranks and lower ranks on opposite sides of the line-up so it's fairer."

"...I know you don't duel as much now, but would you be okay entering one with me?" Judai asked, suddenly slightly nervous for some reason. He pointedly ignored Yubel's slight cackling in the back of his mind.

Yusei blinked in surprise for a moment before giving him a smile and nodding. "Sure, it sounds fun and I've never thought about entering one before," he said, "If it's with you as my partner I think it'll be really fun - that, and we'll have a good shot at winning."

Judai grinned back and cheered, feeling like he was on cloud nine at that point. How could Yusei say such things so matter-of-a-factly? He could feel his face heating up slightly and hoped it wasn't too visible.

Once again, he pointedly ignored both Yubel _and_ Haou this time, who were saying something about Judai getting a taste of his own medicine.


	17. Rainy Day

**_1/17/19_**

It was a rainy day for once in Neo Domino, and because of this and a necessary trip to the grocery store for hot chocolate (well, 'necessary' according to Judai, Yusei wasn't going to argue with him on these matters anymore) they realized something that they really should've thought about days ago.

Judai only had a single spare set of clothes and nothing else, which was fine when he was travelling around but not so fine now that he was settled down in a single place. Winter and spring were cold in the city and the old duel academy jacket he had simply wasn't going to cut it. That, and he seriously needed some more of everything so that he wasn't doing laundry every other day; it took up a lot of time for such a small bundle of clothing.

"Well, you can just borrow some of mine for now," Yusei mused, tilting his head slightly in thought, "they'll be baggy on you considering you're a solid ten centimeters shorter than me, but everyone in this apartment is at least ten centimeters taller than you regardless... that and it's raining, so you'll be covered up by a jacket anyway."

Judai pouted at the comments about his height and Yusei was _highly_ amused, hiding a smile when he went into his room to find something for him to wear. To be honest, he didn't too many clothes either, but at least he had a full drawer of them and a couple jackets to choose from for variety. Almost every shirt was black or blue and the jackets were the same, though he made sure to grab the single maroon jacket he owned for Judai - it was the closest thing he had to red clothing and was a heavy-duty winter jacket anyway with a fluffy hood, so it was perfect for the occasion. Plus, he never wore it anyway, so Judai could just keep it.

Going back out to the living room, he tossed the bundle of clothes at Judai, who barely managed to catch them in time.

"I made sure to get you a long-sleeved shirt so you don't freeze, you don't exactly have much muscle on you," Yusei said, biting back a smile at the face Judai made as he clearly fought between being touched by the gesture and flustered by the teasing. He ended up huffing and biting out a quick thanks before going into Yusei's room to change.

A minute later when the door opened back up, Yusei's mind screeched to a halt, any and all thoughts lost to the sight of Judai dwarfed by a jacket and sporting a black shirt with the red logo he usually wears, the fur on the hood framing his head.

He thinks that maybe he should've thought about this before giving Judai his clothes, but as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty; all he could think about for those first five seconds was how adorable the shorter boy looked wearing his clothes and how much he wanted to hug the fluffy bundle of cuteness he was suddenly confronted with.

"D-Do I look okay?" Judai asked, a slight pink filling his cheeks as he clearly noticed Yusei staring at him. The stutter and the blush didn't help Yusei in the slightest, as it made Judai an even cuter sight to him at the moment.

"You look perfectly fine," Yusei replied, thanking the stars above that he managed to keep his voice normal. He got up quickly, using those precious few moments to look away and compose himself before looking back at Judai with a smile. He slipped on his own jacket before heading towards the door and holding it open.

"Shall we go, then?"

A still slightly-flustered Judai nodded and walked over to him, a small smile lighting up his face at the reassuring pat on the shoulder Yusei gave him as they went out the door.

Neither ever noticed that Jack's door was propped open just enough for a camera to have full view of the event that had occurred. The blonde behind the door had only barely managed to keep himself from snickering and giving himself away, a shit-eating grin spread across his face as he sent the photos to Crow.


	18. Slow Rainy Evening

**_1/18/19_**

Equipped with hot cocoa and fresh marshmallows, Judai was very comfortable on the couch while listening to the combined clacking of the rain on the roof and Yusei tapping away at his laptop. The content smile on his face wouldn't go away and he felt... calm. Happy.

This slow pace wasn't something he was used to, but he relished its simplicity; at least it was a sentiment everyone in the apartment seemed to share. Whilst Judai was used to traveling and action and always needing to do something, Yusei was used to having to fight for himself or his friends just to keep themselves alive, Jack was used to the fast-paced, constant pressure of being a Duel Monster's champion, and Crow was always taking jobs and dealing with the judgmental stares his criminal markers brought.

And wasn't _that_ something? When Yusei had first explained that the cool yellow mark on his face was actually a criminal tracker with an entire file on him stored inside of it, Judai had wanted to punch someone in the face. They just marked people now?! For wanting to help people and perhaps bring two sides together, he had not only had the tattoo forcefully placed onto him, but it practically made him lower than a lower class citizen. Luckily Yusei was able to get him to calm down after he said people were slowly getting over the prejudice, partially in thanks to Satellite being reconnected to the mainland, but it still pissed Judai off to no end whenever they'd get weird looks when they went out.

Sure, most looks were full of awe and thanks due to Yusei being the Savior of Neo Domino, but it definitely explained the ones that were full of malice and disdain.

Judai shook his head slightly, getting off that train of thought - it wouldn't do to think about it much when there was a peaceful evening to enjoy. Instead he sipped on his drink, happily sucking up a half-dissolved marshmallow off the top of the hot chocolate.

Ah yes, the simple joys in life should be savored... like being able to drink hot chocolate, be warm and cozy on a couch, _and_ be able to study the person you're pretty sure you like as more than a friend all at once. Not just that, but be wearing his jacket and shirt while you're at it, too, which they complimented you for looking good in.

Indeed, Judai was very, very content at the moment. Slow rainy days were truly the best.

...Though really, part of what made it so nice was that both Yubel and Haou had decided to take a nap and therefore weren't present to tease him for staring at Yusei. Capitalizing on the opportunity, Judai took a picture of Yusei and made it his phone background.

A few hours later, Yusei would look over and find Judai fast asleep on the couch and curled up in his jacket. Unable to handle the cuteness anymore, he quickly took a picture and transferred it to his laptop for safe keeping.


	19. VR Exists

**_1/19/19_**

Judai'd been looking for games out of pure curiosity when he stumbled across something amazing.

"Yusei! Why did you never tell me about this?!" Judai yelled, stumbling out of the kitchen where he'd been browsing on his phone. Yusei quickly had a phone shoved in face with a sparkly-eyed Judai right behind it.

"I can't see it if you hold it so close to my face, Judai," Yusei chuckled, pushing the phone away and closing his laptop; he was needing a break anyway.

"There's an entire virtual duel monsters world?! Look at this Yusei! Look at it!" Judai exclaimed, waving the phone around more which didn't help Yusei see the screen better at all. Suddenly he found himself trapped in his seat, Judai's arms on the sides of the chair and his face replacing where the phone was just moments before.

"We're playing it together, you and me," Judai said, the serious expression on his face leaving no room for argument as he shook the chair back and forth for emphasis.

Yusei blinked bewilderingly, eventually nodding his head in agreement, "O-okay? But-"

"No buts, we're doin' this. I'm going to go get two headsets, and then we're going to make accounts and see this place. It's supposed to be really cool bro! You get card of your choice to start off with as your partner, duel monsters are everywhere, and some of the psychic duelist forums I've found say that real duel spirits are able to go there and-"

"Okay okay, I get it. Just how much is it?"

Judai just grinned at him, moving away and releasing Yusei from his chair prison. "Don't worry about that! It's my present to you, I'm the one who wants to play it anyway. Now, did you want to come with me or wait here? It shouldn't take me more than fifteen minutes since it's just the game store a few streets away."

"I'll go with you, who knows what'll happen if you go unsupervised for that long," Yusei replied, a teasing grin forming on his face while he got up to grab his jacket.

Judai pouted, "I'm not that bad... am I?"

Yusei ruffled his hair before flopping Judai's jacket over his head, which only made his hair look even puffier due to the coat's fur-lined hood.

"Of course you're not that bad, but you make yourself easy to tease," he said, raising an eyebrow when Judai suddenly froze and narrowed his eyes for a split second. Moments after, it was like it'd never happened, a bright grin appearing instead in its place.

"Come on, come on, let's go already! I wanna play this so bad!" Judai whined, smile staying in place as he pushed Yusei out the door and into the frosty winter air. It was much colder than usual considering it had started snowing right after the rainy days, so there was snow blanketing the ground everywhere.

"Alright alright, we're going," Yusei said, turning around for a moment to lock the door.

A moment was all that was needed for Judai to gather a snowball or two and throw them straight at Yusei's face the second he turned back around to face him.

Yusei glared at Judai, finally managing to wipe all the cold snow off his face. The older boy was in stitches from laughing so hard, barely managing to stand.

So that was how he wanted to play, huh? Yusei cracked his knuckles, eyes glinting wickedly as he quietly gathered up a snowball of his own.

"Haha! O-oh my gods, Yusei, that'll t-teach you- haha! That's what you get for- _AH! Shit, so cold-!"_

Two could play that game.


	20. Into VR?

**_1/20/19_**

The snowball fight lasted for two hours, with Jack and Crow being pulled in around half way through when they came back to the apartment only to get a snowball in the face before they knew what was happening.

Thanks to that though, the game store had closed by the time they were done. It was probably for the best, however, considering all four men were completely soaked to the bone due to the snow and desperately needed to dry off.

Now they all sat around the kitchen table, nursing some warm mugs of whatever they preferred as they all caught up on their days.

"That was fun and all, but how did you guys even end up in a snowball fight anyway?" Crow asked, leaning backwards over his chair. He'd been the second to join, having been initiated into the fight by Jack, who wanted someone to feel the pain he had when he'd gotten home.

"We were _supposed_ to go get a game Judai wanted... but then he took a cheap shot at my face when I went to lock the door," Yusei replied, eyes glinting at the memory, "so I figured he had it coming for him. Jack happened to be collateral at the time, we hadn't even seen him get back."

Judai scowled playfully, pointing a finger at Yusei in indignation, "Hey! You're the one who kept making comments about how I 'couldn't go unsupervised for too long'! _You're_ the one that had that snowball coming!"

"What was that about a game?" Jack asked, cutting cleanly into the conversation before it could go off-topic. He and Crow, ever since they had started paying attention to the other two more, had noticed that it was very easy for them to quickly get engrossed in their own conversation regardless of how many people there were beforehand. Sure, it made getting more embarrassing stories easy as hell, but it could be frustrating sometimes when it was something relating to all four of them and suddenly two were off in their own world.

"Oh! Did you know there's a virtual Duel Monsters world?" Judai replied, his eyes lighting up once again at the thought of the mere concept of an entire virtual world, "Apparently it's supposed to be really cool, and duel spirits can apparently get there from what I've found online. If it's true, that'd be awesome! Anyone could interact with their duel spirit then and duel with them, even if they can't normally see them!"

And on that trail of thought, both Judai and Yusei's eyes flickered to the side, looking at the two duel spirits that had decided to reveal themselves during the snowball war. They hadn't gotten the chance to talk to them for more than a few seconds of introduction, but from their names alone Yusei had informed the other that they had to be Jack and Crow's considering one was a Blackwing monster that they hadn't quite caught the full name of and the other was Dark Resonator. Currently they were happily interacting with all of the other duel spirits, floating around and taking in the apartment and the areas around it.

"Really? Sounds fun, could prove to be a challenge. Do you have to start from scratch with a structure deck?" Crow blinked, a grin mirroring Judai's slowly forming as he thought more about it.

"Yeah, but isn't that part of the fun of it? Plus you get to choose one level four or lower monster that you already have the card of to take with you, and you get to choose which structure deck you start with, so it's not like you're going into it completely blind."

"If you and Yusei are doing it, then I'm joining. Crow, you too, you're joining this. I have to prove that I'm the King, no matter what world I'm in!" Jack exclaimed, nodding his head in resolution. Besides, this would be his chance to truly see how good of a duelist Judai was; he certainly wasn't going to pass up such a prime opportunity.

Judai blinked, suddenly realizing something. "Hey wait, I just realized - if we have both Jack _and_ Yusei joining this game, doesn't that mean it's going to get really popular all of a sudden? Aren't you both basically celebrities here? We're going to have so much competition, this is great!"

Jack practically slammed his fist down on the table, a smug look forming as he started boasting about how he would conquer the new world regardless of how many foes he faced.

On the other hand, the reaction he was really looking for was from Yusei, whose eyes had widened slightly before he deflated in defeat, a very slight pout forming as he stared at Judai like he blamed _him_ for the inevitable fans he'd have to face in the future.

Judai smiled innocently back, tilting his head slightly to really emphasize the 'innocent' part of it; Yusei narrowed his eyes in response, and-

-did Yusei just kick him under the table? Granted, it was lightly, but... wow, Judai didn't know he had it in him, though maybe the earlier snowball war should have indicated already that the generally calm raven-haired man had a mischievous side.

He kicked back a bit harder than Yusei had, his smile slowly starting to turn into a biting grin. Yusei's eyes lit up slightly at the action, clearly looking forward to another playful argument and _not_ one that would result in making them shivering, frost-covered messes.

And so, Crow sighed fondly - everyone at the table had gone into their own little worlds, but it was the kind of lively chaos that he enjoyed. Ironically, as he sipped his mug of tea at the table and flicked through information about the game Judai had discovered on his phone, he was strongly reminded of watching over the kids at the orphanage, considering how loud Jack was being and how Yusei and Judai were now also not-so-secretly partaking in a violent game of footsies.

No wonder he's considered the oldest brother out of the three of them... and wait, would that mean Judai is his brother-in-law in the making?

Huh, maybe he should be trying to embarrass him too now that he thought about it.


	21. Okay Now We're Actually In VR

_**1/21/19**_

"Yusei? Hey! Over here!"

Yusei turned to where he heard his name being called and was confronted with an excited Judai. He'd only just spawned in, getting through the initial tutorial before finally arriving in the beginner city. The beginner city was filled with magitechnology, powered by whatever magic this world had there were bright colors everywhere; a true fantasy world filled with duel monsters.

"You weren't waiting long, were you?" Yusei asked, walking over to where the brown-haired duelist was practically vibrating in anticipation. He had to admit, he was pretty excited too - everything looked so real in this place, and he swore he could feel the breeze as it passed by. Maybe he'd have to look into how all this stuff works someday and branch out from technical machinery.

"Naw, I just got here a few seconds before you did! Anyway, do you see this?! It's so cool! We gotta go explore!" Judai exlaimed, grabbing Yusei's arm and dragging him down the road. Before they could get too far, Yusei pulled him back to a stop, unperturbed by suddenly being dragged and instead focused on a text box that had appeared in front of him.

"Wait, we should probably do the beginning quest line first. It says we can do tag duels together if we party up so that we unlock all the other game features at the same time," he said, smiling over at Judai who had already started figuring out how to make a party. While that was happening, Winged Kuriboh and Quillbolt Hedgehog suddenly appeared out of thin air and happily ran into their partners.

"Yusei! It really is true, we can enter here and interact with stuff. This is going to be fun!" Quillbolt said, nuzzling himself into Yusei when the raven-haired duelist picked him up off the ground. He felt like he was holding a huge stuffed animal as he looked down at the duel monster in his arms. Meanwhile, Winged Kuriboh had quickly taken up his spot atop Judai's head like usual, purring when Judai reached up to pet him a bit.

Soon enough a party invitation popped up in front of him, and he accepted it after adjusting Quillbolt onto one arm so he could use the other. He was just glad you couldn't get tired in this place so his arm wasn't going to die from carrying him around all the time - he was a little too big to put on his head, after all. That, and he wasn't getting stabbed by the screws in his back, which was _fantastic_.

"Okay, so where do we go for the quest?" Judai asked, calming down ever-so slightly now that it'd been a few minutes since their arrival. Yusei suspected that having Winged Kuriboh on his head was a part of it, however.

"It that we have to go defeat a pair of Naturia Cherries who've been playing pranks on people just outside the town," Yusei replied, pulling up his quest log and quickly getting a handle on all the different menus and options, "After we win the duel, we go and turn in the quest to a guard NPC in the town."

"Sweet! Now we can go, right?!"

Yusei nodded, smiling fondly at how quick Judai was to grab his free arm and start dragging him along again, though this time in the direction of the quest marker. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Judai was older than him by a year or so...

"What attribute deck did you pick to start with? I picked the earth type structure deck to match with Quillbolt," Yusei asked, idly going through all the different menu screens while taking in the town.

"I picked the light attribute one to match with Winged Kuriboh. We should probably go over them and figure out how well they'll work together for now..." Judai replied, summoning his deck out of thin air and starting to go through it, leaning over to compare it to Yusei's when he summoned his as well, though as a deck-list pop-up text box instead seeing as his arms were being occupied.

And thus they headed out into the forest, arms linked as they made strategies for the upcoming tag duels they'd face.


	22. Crafting Cards

**_1/22/19_**

"Whoa! So we can craft cards if we get the right combination of other cards? Cool!" Judai said excitedly, going through the new menu so fast that Yusei doubted he was even looking at half the cards. At this point they'd just finished the entire beginner's quest line, unlocking a bunch of new menus like special duel skills, partner skills, ranked duels, and last but not least, the crafting menu. It was pretty cool that they'd be able to trade in cards that they had too many copies of in order to get rarer ones, since they'd found themselves loaded with common rarity cards from doing all the quests.

"You can upgrade cards to be different rarities too, with the highest being prismatic like Quillbolt and Kuriboh's cards were," Yusei noted, idly flicking through the different crafting tabs, "It seems like it's more for achievements than anything else..."

"No way dude, remember how sweet our partners looked when we summoned them? They had all those sparkly effects and were glowing! When we get our full decks we gotta deck them out!"

Yusei snorted at the unintentional pun, which Judai still didn't seem to realize he'd made; the brown-haired duelist stared at him for a few seconds in confusion as to what was so funny before it hit him.

"...I did _not_ mean to make that pun."

Yusei hummed, neither agreeing or disagreeing with him, and Judai pouted at being teased again. Unable to help himself this time, he reached up and ruffled Judai's hair, his duel monster not taking it up at the moment.

"Come on, we should probably craft a few cards then log out for the day, it's almost dinner time," Yusei said, glancing at the little digital clock in the upper right corner of his vision. Time seemed to fly by ridiculously fast, though he supposed that was what happened when you were having fun with good company.

"Ah, is it really? It feels like it's only been an hour or so, damn," Judai replied, blinking up at him after fixing his hair back down. At this, Winged Kuriboh and Quillbolt ran back over from the market stalls across the road where they'd been looking at some shiny accessories, leaping back into their partner's arms.

"Aww, already? You guys'll play again tomorrow, right?" Quillbolt asked, happily letting himself get pet on the head. Apparently the duel spirits could register the feelings as being real and interact with the world around them, so it was a liberating experience for them as they wouldn't wear out their duelists' energy in the process.

With a smile Judai leaned over, letting Winged Kuriboh play a bit with Quillbolt more before they decided to log out, "Of course we'll play again, especially now that we know you guys can do stuff here. Maybe not for as long, but we'll definitely play."

Yusei nodded in agreement, moving his attention back to the crafting screen as he decided what to make. Unfortunately this meant he missed Judai's secretive wink to Quillbolt Hedgehog, which resulted in Yusei getting knocked to the ground through a collective effort by his duel spirit and Judai; the sound of a screenshot getting taken sounded only seconds after.

Later that night Judai would pull it up on the holo-tablet he'd discovered Yusei owned the other day, showing it and several other pictures of the things they'd been doing to Jack and Crow, who then vowed to get the game the next day so they could catch up on their own time. Yusei hadn't even realized you could take pictures in the first place, nor that Judai had been taking them in the first place.

He died internally when Jack and Crow kept teasing him about getting dog-piled by a bunch of duel spirits and Judai - apparently his expression of shock was absolutely priceless, and he flushed in embarrassment when the other three immediately went to order physical copies from the local photo-print store.

He wished they hadn't picked the one where he had Judai on top of him, because now he was going to be reminded of it all the time, which wouldn't help his concentration at all.


	23. Hidden Quest - Start

**_1/23/19_**

The two men blinked at the quest they'd just received while going through a high-level ancient forest dungeon, winning duels and stocking up on duel points, the virtual world's currency, to buy the new boxes that would be released the next day. Seeing as the game was still relatively new, there were lots of archetypes and cards that weren't implemented yet, so being able to branch out with the new set would be nice and bring in some variety.

"A hidden quest?" Judai questioned, looking at the pop-up in confusion, "I didn't realize there were these types of quests..."

"It says it requires a max friendship level to unlock, and to have at least two-hundred tag duels logged with the same friend," Yusei said, glancing over at the other duelist, "Well, we have been playing this game together the entire time, and always with tag duels... now that I think about it, I think we both have only a handful of regular duels logged."

"Huh, I never really thought about that," Judai replied, reading the rest of the quest description quickly. " _The Story of the Legends of the Forest_ is a pretty vague title, and everything else is just question marks, including the rewards... well, I suppose we'll just have to see what happens! Let's do this!"

Yusei hummed in agreement, nodding and pressing the accept button at the same time as Judai. Suddenly a glowing particle trail appeared in front of them, forming a new path through the forest that went completely off the original trail. It took a bit longer than they expected to reach the end of it, but when they did they were greeted with a cave entrance and a quest update.

"Looks like it's a new dungeon, the quest says we need to complete it to move on to the next part of the quest," Yusei said, taking in the entrance of the cave. A few sparkling stones were embedded in the rock, the light of the sun bouncing off of them brightly and hitting the inner walls.

"Well, let's go already! The dungeon description says it should only take an hour or so to complete, so we should be good to just go now and take a break a later," Judai exclaimed, grinning and dragging Yusei along with him after the raven-haired man nodded. The cave was littered with little glowing carvings, and bit by bit they slowly pieced together the story of two friends becoming, well, friends. Eventually they ran across their first opponents - duel monsters, as usual - and began a string of duels that brought them to the end of the cave.

"I think that was the last of them," Judai stated, watching the pair of Gravekeeper's Heretics disappear into pixels. They'd been extremely annoying to deal with since their skills were the same and put an extra 'Necrovalley' spell card in their starting hands, so even though they'd destroyed one, another would just get placed on the field and allow all their Gravekeeper's monsters to reap the benefits.

Well, if there was one thing Judai prided himself on, it would be his ability to come back from behind. It was a trait he and Yusei shared, and it helped them immensely when they started synergizing their decks.

Walking up to the wall at the very end, Judai studied the huge image that was carved into it. Yusei joined him a few moments later, causing the quest window to pop up once again.

"Well, it looks like we should take our break now. The quest says to only start the next section once we're ready as we can't quit once we start or else we'll automatically fail the quest," Yusei said, reading over the window again before closing it and looking at the wall himself, "For now we should probably figure out how to even get to the next part, since it also said that this wall held the secret to accessing it."

"A riddle?" Judai pouted, glaring slightly at the glowing wall in front of them before slumping onto Yusei.

"J-Judai-"

"Help, I can't deal with this! I have to think?! I don't wanna do riddles, I've had enough riddles for a lifetime already!"

He saw Yusei roll his eyes but also smile in amusement at his antics, causing him to laugh in success at bringing Yusei out of what Judai's come to call his 'brooding, stoic thinking mode'. He tended to slip into it after having to focus on things for a while, like working on his projects or, in this case, having to duel multiple duels in succession.

"Come on you drama queen, let's log out. Weren't you going to teach me how to properly roll out dough or something?"

"Oh yeah! When I was in Italy this one family I stayed with for a couple days taught me how to bake a whole bunch of things from scratch. Aw man, I know you can't actually feel hungry here, but just thinking about that stuff is making me want it... and hey wait, I am _not_ a drama queen! Jack's the drama queen!"

Yusei snorted at that, logging out quickly before Judai could protest any more than he already had.

The flour fight about ten minutes later in the kitchen was fantastic revenge.


	24. Hidden Quest - There Be Dragons

**_1/24/19_**

"Is this quest ever going to end? We've been doing solely this quest for the past week," Judai sighed, staring at the newest quest update.

"It probably has really good rewards, so just think about that. Besides, look at the rest of the quest description - we've almost revealed all the question marks. There's only one more line of them."

He grumbled a bit more in response, though he couldn't really refute that; Judai was actually very excited to see what they'd get for completing a hidden quest like this, especially considering how long it'd taken them.

Still, it was taking way too long for his taste.

"Well, let's do this," he said, staring at the mountain path in front of them, "Do you think we'll have to go all the way to the top?"

"Most likely," Yusei replied, glancing at the snowy mountain peak. "We should probably just get through the rest of the quest tonight... you have a tournament in two days so you're going to need your sleep tomorrow night."

"I'm down for that, though should we tell Crow and Jack to log in? We can chat with them and help them with whatever they need on the side while we go through, and tomorrow they're both not doing anything important so it should be fine if they stay up so late."

Yusei hummed in thought before saying, "Sure. I'll message them real fast, then we can start heading up."

While the taller duelist did that, Judai looked down at Winged Kuriboh, who'd decided he wanted to be held like a stuffed bear today. He ruffled his fur a bit, eliciting a happy squeal from the duel spirit that he smiled at; he still hadn't figured out why the spirits could interact in this place, but he was glad for it all the same because having duel monsters here was the norm which let him play with his first duel spirit in the open.

"Alright, let's go. They said they'll be on after they eat dinner," Yusei said, holding out his arm this time for Judai to take. Apparently he'd gotten tired of getting dragged away everywhere, so a few days ago he'd taken to just willingly giving up his arm. Unknown to Yusei, this had clued Judai in to the fact that he'd literally been dragging him around everywhere, which he legitimately _hadn't realized._ He felt kind of bad about doing it, but then he'd think of how Yusei was willingly offering to walk arm-in-arm with him and get more embarrassed than anything else, which ironically caused him to calm down and walk at the same pace as the raven-haired man.

The duels this time were spread out over the few hours it took them to travel to the top since it wasn't considered a dungeon, and was instead a regular field area. About half an hour through the journey, Jack and Crow had logged on and started asking them various questions about different cards and quests as they'd just finished the beginning quest line and were trying to figure out what to do next. Their bickering was amusing, and chatting with them helped make the time pass faster.

Once they reached the top they were greeted with a cleared out, flat area containing a huge stone statue of a boy and a girl holding hands and pointing at the sky. Next to them were two more statues, both depicting a dragon, the plaques on them stating that they were the two friends' duel monsters.

"Do you recognize those dragons at all?" Judai asked.

"No, I don't," Yusei said, tilting his head slightly as he studied them, "Quillbolt, Winged Kuriboh, you know anything about them?"

Both duel spirits shook their heads, looking curiously up from their duelists' arms. Suddenly there was a flash of light as the ground rumbled underneath them, the sky growing darker as storm clouds rolled in. Judai grabbed onto Yusei tighter as they braced themselves against the sudden gusts, looking up once it stopped hitting at them.

Both their mouths fell open at the sight of two huge dragons slamming into the ground in front of them, roaring in unison.

"What the hell?!" Judai yelped, sharing an alarmed look with Yusei before the quest window suddenly popped up before them.

"It's the last part of the quest!" Yusei exclaimed, having to yell over the continuous roars of the dragons before them. "It says we have to win a tag duel against them!"

Looking at the title hovering over the two dragons - _The Legendary Synchro Dragons, Clear Wing and Crystal Wing_ \- Judai couldn't help but wonder for a split second how they'd ended up in this situation from a quest that supposedly dealt with 'Legends of the _Forest_ ', not 'Legends of the _Mountain_ '.

"Well then, let's do this Yusei!" Judai grinned, filled with anticipation for what was sure to be the toughest duel they'd faced in the game yet. Looking over at Yusei, he met his eyes with a determined gleam, both of them nodding in unison as they summoned their decks.

"I'd say it's time for these dragons to get their game on, Judai!"

"Hell yeah! Now you're speaking my language! Let's show these guys just how strong we are when we're together!"


	25. Hidden Quest - Complete

**_1/25/19_**

"Alright, it's time to end this! I draw!" Judai yelled, glancing at the card he'd drawn before grinning in victory. They'd been down the whole game, but they'd just managed to even things out slightly last turn, getting the dragons' life points down to 1900 while they were at 1550; now, judging by the wicked look on Judai's face, Yusei was pretty sure they'd just won the duel.

"First, I summon the tuner monster Chaos End Master from my hand, then activate my face-down card Enemy Controller to put your Strong Wind Dragon into defense position," he said. Cards floated around in front of him, moving and glowing as they each activated - it was something Yusei really liked about this game, that no duel disks were used and instead making magic floating cards. It really fit the fantasy world well, and when combined with the long, old-fashioned clothing made it seem like everyone was a sorcerer or something along those lines.

Then again, Yusei just liked seeing Judai dressed up in them as he couldn't help but find it fitting for the man, especially when he was dueling and looked so serious, like a king of some sort.

"Next, I attack Strong Wind Dragon with Chaos End Master!"

Luckily none of their opponent's back row was triggered, so the attack went through. Strong Wind Dragon shattered into pixels with a strong punch from Chaos End Master.

"Chaos End Master's effect activates! When he destroys a monster by battle and sends it to the graveyard, I can summon one level five or higher monster from my deck that has 1600 or less attack. I choose Solar Wind Jammer!"

The machine monster faded onto the field next to Chaos End Master, its body whirring as it lazily floated around.

"Yusei, this duel is ours all thanks to you," Judai said, catching Yusei's eyes and giving him a blinding smile. Yusei smiled back, eager to see what the other duelist was going to do.

"I activate the face-down card my partner set, Urgent Tuning! During the Battle Phase, I can synchro summon one synchro monster using monsters I control. I tune my level five Solar Wind Jammer to my level three Chaos End Master to synchro summon Light End Dragon in attack mode!"

The huge white dragon roared into existence, staring down the single other dragon that was left on their opponents' field - Clear Wing Synchro Dragon. Yusei'd been able to destroy Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon last turn with a card effect, so that worked very well in their favor as now...

"In the graveyard, Breakthrough Skill's effect activates! I can banish it from the graveyard to negate one monster's effects until the End Phase, and I choose Clear Wing Synchro Dragon! I also banish Skill Successor from the graveyard in order to activate it's effect, giving Light End Dragon 800 attack until the End Phase. Now, I attack with Light End Dragon, activating it's effect - when it attacks, I can permanently decrease it's attack and defense by 500 points in order to decrease the attack and defense points of the monster it's battling by 1500 until the End Phase!"

 _Light End Dragon - 2900 ATK_ vs. _Clear Wing Synchro Dragon - 1000 ATK_

Yusei looked on with a grin, seeing that Judai had really thought this through. The extra attack boost from Skill Successor gave Light End Dragon the little bit of extra damage they needed in order to wipe out the rest of their opponent's life points through this one attack. Light End Dragon shattered Clear Wing Synchro Dragon to bits in a shower of bright white pixels, the sound of their opponent's life points hitting zero ringing beautifully shortly after.

As their cards un-summoned themselves, the long, tense duel finally over, he happily caught Judai when the brown-haired duelist jumped at him.

"We did it, Yusei! We defeated huge dragons! That was so awesome, holy crap!" He yelled, bouncing up and down excitedly in his arms.

"We did, indeed. You were amazing, pulling off the exact damage we needed to win," Yusei chuckled, hugging the other close. He may not be nearly as energetic as the other, but he was certainly just as happy about the victory.

Finally, this quest could come to an end.

With a roar, the two legendary dragons flew off into the sky, taking the storm with them and revealing a clear night sky full of shining stars. The two gaped at the sight, Judai quickly snapping a screenshot before the quest completion window popped up before them.

Their eyes widened at the rewards list.

"Whoa, sweet! We got so much stuff dude, this was so worth it! What does all this even do?!" Judai said, tapping on each thing one by one.

"Well, the title _Star-crossed Duelists_ is apparently a unique title, and can't be earned by anyone else now. The special skill _Shine Brightly With You_ can only be used when we're tag-dueling, and lets us... wow, it lets us search each other's deck for a monster once per person, per duel and special summon it in defense position," Yusei replied, blinking at the skill they'd just earned. That was a skill? It was way too strong! It didn't have any restrictions on the monster, nor did it negate their effects at all!

"Wait, Yusei, it says here we got matching capes, we gotta wear them!"

"We also got... effect rings? If we're both wearing them, then we get a special starry aura effect when we're within five feet of each other. Let's put them both on, I guess-"

Judai suddenly squealed, tugging excitedly on Yusei's arm and pointing wordlessly at the very bottom of the list. He blinked in confusion for a second before his eyes widened in understanding.

They'd gotten the Legendary Synchro Dragons... which were undeniably good, considering their effects. The only reason they'd been able to get around them was because they mostly used spell cards to destroy other cards on the field, and put that copy of Breakthrough Skill in Yusei's deck.

And then, multitudes of pings ran out as the messaging system unmuted itself now that they were done with their duel. Curiously, they looked at them before looking at each other and laughing.

 _Group Chat_

 _TrueKingJack: WHAT DID YOU GUYS DO JUST NOW_

 _MurderOfCrows: Uhhh so I don't know if you guys know this but_

 _TrueKingJack: I DEMAND YOU TELL ME_

 _MurderOfCrows: A server-wide announcement just happened that said 'Congratulations to users TheSupremeHERO and StarSavior for passing the Legendary Unique Tag Duelist Quest'_

 _TrueKingJack: WHAT IS THAT NEW SYMBOL ON BOTH YOUR STATUSES_

 _MurderOfCrows: In the forums everyone's freaking out haha-_


	26. Recognized

**_1/26/19_**

On one hand, they should have expected this to happen after what'd happened in the game, but considering it had just happened the day before, the two weren't exactly thinking about what other people would think. Yusei, at the very least, was very recognizable and practically a celebrity, so it wasn't surprising for people to know that he was StarSavior in the VR game.

On the other hand, Judai was _not_ expecting to be recognized on sight when he walked into the tournament location that day. He was infinitely thankful that it wasn't going to be broadcast at this point, but the fact that people knew him anyways... well, at least it meant his popularity was climbing positively.

"I-I have to ask something," the guy at the counter had said after signing Judai in as 'present', "Do you play the game _Duel Dimensions Online_?"

He blinked in surprise before nodding his head, which quickly elicited a starry-eyed reaction from counter-dude.

"A-Are you TheSupremeHERO?! You look almost identical!"

The loud exclamation drew the attention of other people around them, who were suddenly very interested in what was happening. Of course, since he wasn't really aware of how many people at this tournament played the game (of which many apparently did, and did so often), he couldn't have been prepared for the chaos he'd cause.

"Hey yeah, that's me!" Judai grinned, slightly confused but rolling with the conversation anyway, "I've been playing it for about two weeks now, it's been pretty fun. I'm guessing you play it too?"

"Holy shit, is this actually him?!"

"Quick, someone post this to the forums-"

"Did he just say he's only been playing it for two weeks and yet he's _already legendary what-_ "

"This goes beyond legendary, in that span of time he got _Yusei Fudo_ of all people to _tag duel with him_ , just who the hell is he and how does he know him?!"

Soon enough the whole room was in an uproar, excited duelists from the game's online community surrounding him with questions that Judai was too overwhelmed to even begin to answer clearly. Luckily he was bailed out by some nearby security guards, who dragged him out of the crowd and away to the tournament waiting room, giving him sympathetic looks along the way.

"With popularity like that, I guess we can be looking forward to some interesting duels from you," one guard laughed, patting him on the shoulder. All Judai could do was laugh nervously, still slightly shocked by how many people knew who he was from the game alone.

Well, at least it meant he'd already made a name for himself, but now there was more pressure to live up to it in this tournament and show his worth as a duelist in real life. If anything, Judai wanted to win even more now, because based on what people were saying back there, he had a lot to prove...

Like the fact that he's more than good enough to be Yusei's partner.

Determinedly, he pulled out his cards, sorting through them and restructuring his deck with all of his side cards; he had planned for having to make his deck up to par with more powerful opponents, but now that he had something to prove, he was going to go in with a much stronger variant of his deck.

In the back of his mind, he felt Yubel hum with glee and Haou tense in anticipation for the upcoming duels.

Oh, he'd have fun with this tournament, alright - fun making the audience erupt into chaos when he methodically tore apart all of his enemies' strategies and best cards.

For Yusei's sake though, he'd try not to smile too wickedly. Judai wasn't Haou after all, and he didn't get a kick out of his enemy's misery - he just happened to enjoy proving himself to others when they doubted him. It was something he'd been having to do for years now, and people's reactions were always amusing when he succeeded.


	27. Wrecking the Finals Again

**_1/27/19_**

"This has been an intense finals match so far! Both competitor's life points are only half-way gone, and it seems to be a defensive game on both sides so far!" The announcer yelled, hyping up the stadium. Judai had put a lot more stall cards in for this deck, since it required a very specific combo to pull off, especially since it'd been combined with his HERO deck instead of being purely the one strategy.

It would all depend on his next draw.

"Tch, how annoying," His opponent said, an upcoming duelist that had slowly been gaining popularity since graduating from Duel Academy last year. He glanced at Judai's three face-down cards before deciding to attack with the sole monster he had on the field, Berserk Gorilla.

Judai took the attack, of course, his life points dropping down to 2000 from 4000. He was just glad his bluff had worked at this point, since those cards were really meant for getting out his deck's recently added win condition.

"...I can't play anything else, so I end my turn," the other said. He had no back-row placed down, and his hand only consisted of one card.

"Alright then, my turn! Draw!" Judai yelled, looking at his card after taking a breath.

Heart of the cards, indeed - it was just the card he needed to win this turn. He grinned, looking back to his opponent who suddenly looked slightly worried.

"I've drawn just the card to end this duel, so I hope you're ready for this!" He exclaimed, causing the audience to go into an uproar as they anticipated the rest of his turn.

"Whoa! Yuki claims that he can end the duel this turn, but his opponent still has 3800 life points! What could he possibly be planning?!" The announcer said, sounding out over the crowd's yells. Judai could just barely pinpoint Yusei amongst the crowd, watching with an intense focus, which only served to hype him up for what he was about to do.

"First I activate the card I just drew, Foolish Burial! It lets me send one card from my deck to my graveyard, and I choose the monster Yubel!" Judai said, slowly getting on a roll, "Then I activate my face-down card, Call of the Haunted, which let's me summon a monster from the graveyard in attack position, then equip it with that card - I choose Yubel!"

Yubel faded onto the field, wings spreading out fiercely as she grinned wildly.

"Finally! I was wondering when I'd get to come out to play," she said, humming to herself in satisfaction before holding a finger up to her face in thought. "Ne, isn't this the first time your precious mechanic gets to see me? He can see spirits now after all, so he can see all my actual movements- oh! Should I wave to him?

"Yubel, no- stop it!" Judai hissed out, "He can hear you too! Oh my gods, I never thought you'd try to _embarrass me why did I play you-_ "

"Don't worry, dear, I won't embarrass you in front of the boy, but you have to let me meet him sometime soon. It's only right since our souls are fused together."

" _And me too - he should realize that all three of us come together_ ," Haou mentioned. He'd been in a rather happy mood throughout the day due to the duels, which meant he'd been speaking up more and, unfortunately, contributing to the teasing.

They both made good points, however.

"Alright, you both can meet him later, but for now let's get on with the duel," Judai murmured, placating the other two before finally moving on to the next part of his turn.

"Yubel won't be staying around for long though! I activate my other trap, Dust Tornado, to destroy Call of the Haunted, which destroys Yubel as a result as well!"

"Why would you do that? Ha, looks like I didn't really have much to worry about after all-"

"Yubel's effect activates!" Judai continued, steamrolling through opponent's taunts, "When she's destroyed, I can special summon 'Yubel - Terror Incarnate' from either my hand, deck, or graveyard; however, this version won't be staying around for much longer either since I activate my final face-down card, Raigeki Break! I discard one card from my hand in order to destroy 'Yubel - Terror Incarnate', activating her effect; when 'Yubel - Terror Incarnate' is removed from the field, I can special summon 'Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare' from my hand, deck, or graveyard. Say hello to her final form!"

Yubel roared onto the field, shaking the ground as she slammed down onto it. The huge twin headed dragon exuded a powerful, fearsome aura as the multitudes of eyes opened up on her body, staring down her opponent, who looked on in fear.

"T-that monster has zero attack, so I s-should still be fine... r-right? I've still got 3800 life points left!" He asked, stuttering as he desperately tried to figure out why a zero attack monster card was so utterly terrifying and huge.

"Finally, I activate the equip spell Megamorph! The monster I equip it to has its original attack points doubled while my life points are lower than my opponents, and I'm equipping it to your Berserk Gorilla, bringing its attack up to 4000! Now, 'Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare' attacks!"

The stadium's shouts were deafening, the entire audience on the edge of their seats as Yubel roared and tackled the burning gorilla, swiping at it with her talons.

"This is the end!" Judai yelled, adrenaline pumping wildly as he excitedly took in Yubel's ultimate form commanding everyone's attention, "'Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare' cannot be destroyed by battle, and I take no battle damage from battles involving this card! Also, now that it's the end of the damage step, their final effect activates! If this face-up attack position card battled an opponent's monster, my opponent takes damage equal to that monster's attack!"

"What?! No! I only have 3800 life points, Berserk Gorilla has 4000! NOOOOO-"

Berserk Gorilla went up in a fire of flames which then engulfed his opponent, who screamed at the crushing defeat. With that the duel ended, Yubel's dragon form fading from the field and leaving behind an extremely excited audience.

"Gotcha'! That was a fun duel!" Judai winked, giving his signature salute.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMAN! He's done it again! Judai Yuki has won the finals in the nearly the same way as the last, using his opponent's monsters against them! He's one duelist that everyone needs to watch out for, because he's on a roll straight for the big leagues!"

"YUKI! YUKI!"

"That's TheSupremeHERO for ya! It's no wonder he won!"

"He's so good! Did you see that?! I don't even want to think about how terrifying he'd be in a tag duel with the Savior, even if it's in game!"

Judai relished the crowd's shouts, smiling brightly at the cheers and waving. He peeked over at Yusei as he exited the arena, and upon seeing the man sporting a fond, proud smile, felt rather accomplished and happy.

It was a fun tournament indeed.

...Now, it was time to collect his prize money! He was going to make a feast tonight now that he had even more spending money and had, in his opinion, more than earned it - his mouth was already starting to water at the thought of food. Tournaments were _exhausting_ , whew!


	28. Meeting Yubel

**_1/28/19_**

The morning after the tournament, once Jack and Crow had left to do whatever it was they needed to do for the day, Judai sat Yusei down at the couch with a couple fresh mugs of green tea before rolling the desk chair over and sitting straight across from him. Judging from the uncharacteristically serious look on his face and the telling way Judai was biting his lip, Yusei figured it was going to be time for another heart-to-heart conversation.

It... kind-of was? It wasn't really what he was expecting, but considering the topic it was considerably happier than anything else it could have been, so he'd take it.

"Eh? Wait, explain one more time but slower - you said everything so fast that I only caught about half of it."

"Okay, okay," Judai said, taking a deep breath before nervously starting again. His first attempt had been a fast-paced ramble, so he had to consciously slow himself down. "So basically, you know Yubel exists, right?"

"They're the duel monster that... you said had your soul fused with, right? And that you can use their powers. Plus, you did just use Yubel yesterday in the tournament."

"Well, she wants to meet you. Yubel obviously has a spirit form, considering the whole duel spirit thing, but she doesn't really come out that much since she doesn't have to in order to talk to me - our souls are fused so we can just talk in my head. A-Anyways, she made a good point yesterday in that she should probably meet you considering she's been here as long as I have and... yeah."

Yusei blinked at that, sorting through the new information before smiling and nodding his head, "Makes sense. I'd like to meet her too, in that case."

With that, Yubel suddenly appeared next to Judai, floating slightly in the air and stretching before looking back at him.

"Ah yes, I finally get to talk to you in person - It's nice to make your acquaintance, I am Yubel," she said, jerking her head slightly over towards Judai's direction, "In other words, I'm the one with the common sense who makes sure this one here doesn't get himself killed doing whatever inane ideas he happens to think up."

"Y-Yubel! Noooo, dammit, I knew you would do this!" Judai groaned, covering his face with his hands in embarrassment.

Yusei was highly amused, immediately forming a good opinion of the duel spirit as he replied, "Yusei Fudo, nice to meet you. You've got your work cut out for you, huh?"

"I'm just lucky that our thoughts can be walled off from each other so I don't go insane from everything he does," Yubel said, smirking in approval at him keeping up the joke at Judai's expense.

"Yusei, must you betray me so?!" Judai exclaimed, pulling his feet up onto the chair so he could curl up into a ball of embarrassment instead. It was quite the adorable sight, causing both Yusei and Yubel to chuckle.

Yubel hummed in thought, crossing her arms and turning to face Judai.

"Now, Judai, there's someone else he needs to meet as well, so you should probably explain before you let him out," she said softly but firmly, leaving no room for argument. Clearly this was something they'd argued about beforehand, though what was this about a third person for him to meet?

Yusei looked on confusedly as he saw Judai freeze for a second before sighing and uncurling from his ball, all traces of embarrassment gone; the serious expression was back, as was the nervous biting of his lip. He didn't say anything for a minute or so, causing him to look to Yubel in question.

"...He's talking with him, so give him a minute or so. You're going to need context and they're debating over who will tell you what," she answered, eyes glinting with an emotion he couldn't quite decipher as she looked at the brown-haired duelist. It felt like... fondness? But mixed with solemnness - an odd mixture, yet something he understood the implications of when he thought about it a bit more. That sort of feeling was one he was intimately familiar with, as he felt it whenever he thought back to the events that had earned him his 'Savior' title in the first place.

Clearly, whoever this was had something to do with whatever made Judai so remorseful and depressed, but considering how nervous the other man seemed to even begin to introduce him to Yusei, he was worried that he wouldn't accept the new addition.

As if he _wouldn't_ accept him - Yusei fully trusted Judai's judgment when it came to people, after all, and if Judai trusted him _and_ had to live with him in his mind, then the least Yusei could do was trust whoever it was as well.


	29. Meeting Haou

_**1/29/19**_

"So basically, you're his reincarnation, you've taken up his previous title of 'Supreme King of Darkness', and can use the Gentle Darkness because of him."

"...Yeah. There's more, but that's a story for another time," Judai mumbled, rambling on for a bit more, "I know you said something about having to purge darkness from this world, but the Gentle Darkness is... different in nature. It's like your light, in that it's meant to fight against evil in the right hands, in this case the evil being the Light of Destruction. It corrupted people and controlled them, like what the uh... Earthbound Immortals, right? What the Earthbound Immortals did to the Dark Signers you had to face. When they lost their grip on their hosts, they ended up just taking over instead."

Yusei hummed in thought, "It's a bit like yin and yang, isn't it? You need a bit of both to keep the balance. Besides, you're all in your right minds and in control of your powers _now_ , so that's what really matters." He smiled softly at Judai, who relaxed slightly before smiling back.

"Well, I should probably let him out now. We usually switch for a day anyways every month or so, so it can just be today. I'm going to go take a nice, long mental nap in the mean time!" Judai said, sitting up straight in his chair before looking Yusei in the eye. "Warning you now, he's like, way more monotone than me and isn't the most talkative person ever, so don't be surprised by that."

At that Yubel snorted from where she was floating idly nearby and had occasionally been throwing in her two cents, "They'll get along just fine, they're both stoic as hell and nothing seems to phase them much."

"Stoic...?" Yusei frowned slightly in confusion, pointing questioningly at himself. Both Judai and Yubel raised their eyebrows, responding with a deadpan stare.

"Yeah, okay, I'm switching now. Talk to you later Yusei!" Judai stated, giving him one last smile before closing his eyes for a few seconds.

When they opened again, they were a pure gold that stared piercingly wherever they gazed. Yusei watched with growing intrigue as his entire body seemed to change in slight ways; his posture was stiffer, his face was slightly sterner and held a serious look that greatly contrasted how laid-back Judai generally seemed to be, and when he talked, Haou's voice was indeed significantly more monotone and as a result, slightly lower than Judai's usually sounded.

"So, we finally meet," Haou mused, holding out his hand for Yusei to shake, "I am Haou."

"Yusei," he responded, shaking his hand firmly and eliciting an approving look from Haou. Haou hummed, taking a moment to look around the room before standing up and stretching his arms up into the air.

The golden-eyed king blinked lazily for a few moments before sharing a look with Yubel and smirking.

"Judai walled off both our connections," he hummed, and suddenly Yusei had two sets of eyes staring intently at him. He blinked nervously at the expressions, tilting his head slightly in confusion.

"That means we can finally embarrass the crap out of him!" Yubel cackled, moving closer to where they were sitting, "Young boy, you are about to get _so_ much blackmail material on Judai, so listen well!"

"E-Eh?!" Yusei stuttered, looking at them wide-eyed in shock. Haou's eyes were positively glinting with mischief, a small smirk staying on his face as he chuckled lowly before gesturing for Yusei to come with him to the kitchen.

"Before that, I'd appreciate more tea, as well as food. I only get to eat every once in a while after all," he said, leaving no room for argument as he spun on his heels quickly, causing his jacket to flare out regally somehow.

Yusei wasn't sure if Judai had simply forgotten about this side of them, had never seen it, or was just completely wrong about their personalities, because the second Judai was out of the picture in all ways, they'd gotten much more lively. Then again, maybe it was _because_ of Judai being gone - they'd probably never had the chance to embarrass him in front of another person before without him knowing; from how they were acting it was like they were his older siblings, or even parents.

Thank the stars he was good at going with the flow, as this next day was sure to be chaotic with Haou and Yubel around.


	30. Telling Stories

_**1/30/19**_

"We have so many stories about Judai, there's too many to count," Yubel chuckled, floating next to where Haou was happily cleaning off a plate of pizza, "Some of them are from before he had us too, since fusing our souls and awakening Haou meant that we got to see his memories. That child was innocent, even as a teenager!"

"Innocent?" Yusei asked, still feeling quite blindsided even though he'd had about ten minutes now to process what was happening. He'd grabbed a glass of water and sat down so he'd have something to ease the bit of nervousness he had away.

"Oh yes, he was quite innocent until we came around and finally started teaching him things he should've learned about years beforehand. The only things he really knew about were having friends and dueling, mainly because his parents were never around to teach him," she explained, scowling a bit at the thought. "They weren't completely horrible people, I can understand that now, but they certainly didn't care for him much. He was left alone in a huge apartment for most of his childhood, and he lost the ability to see duel monsters at a young age for... reasons. Luckily they came back when he was a teenager, but that's besides the point - the point is that he was naive as hell."

Having finished his food and downed a glass of iced tea, Haou finally joined the conversation, "He didn't know what a fiancee was until we told him. He was eighteen."

Yusei blinked in surprise, "Really?"

"One time in his first year of Duel Academy, this one student got really mad that Judai'd been able to become friends with the girl the student liked - it was some stuck-up rich kid - and challenged him to a duel to decide who'd become her fiancee," Yubel laughed, a wide grin appearing on her face, "Of course, after Judai won, it was pretty clear he had no idea what a fiancee even was. The poor girl didn't even try to explain it to him, saying that it just meant that they were friends!"

"We think she went on to tell all his other eventual friends about this because they never tried to explain anything even remotely close to love or politics or _anything_ along those lines to him," Haou stated.

"Yes, in fact they would actively try to avoid those topics around him! He never noticed it back then, but it was so obvious to us when we got his memories. Whenever he said anything odd, they'd just move on and pretend it never happened!"

"That's... that's actually kind of funny," Yusei said, laughing a bit as he thought about it more; yes, he could easily see Judai being that oblivious to things as a teen. It fit with his personality, at least.

"You're lucky to be meeting him at twenty-two," Haou said, golden eyes closing as he sipped away at the extra mug of warm tea he'd also gotten earlier before continuing, "Judai's now... socially trained. Travelling helped him."

Yubel snorted at that, "Yeah, that and us explaining every little bit of how people interact with each other. Don't get us wrong, Judai's always been exceptional at reading people and getting along with them, but that's all instinctual; it did nothing to help him with actually understanding why different relationships existed, how things differ between different cultures, and all that stuff. Caused a lot of hilarious conversations with people in the beginning, like the time he couldn't figure out why this one girl in... I can't remember where, somewhere in Europe though. Anyway, this one girl clearly was trying to hit on him, but it all completely went over his head."

Haou actually laughed this time, a low chuckle escaping before he added on, "It took us a couple days to get it through his head, because apparently the boy had never had 'the talk' either, let alone learned about attraction to others. This was at nineteen."

Yusei choked, the sip of water he'd been taking backfiring on him.

"...Nineteen?!" He coughed out in shock. Even knowing now that Judai had clearly been _uninformed_ in his academy years, wasn't nineteen a bit late to realize that sexual attraction even existed?! At the orphanage, Martha had taken them all aside individually when they were about nine or so to give them a basic version of sex ed - a bit earlier than she'd like to have to do it, she explained, but considering they lived in the Satellite in rather harsh conditions, it was necessary for them to learn about. But still, nineteen?

"Yup! But that's enough of that for now. Haou, wasn't there something you wanted to ask him?" Yubel stated. Yusei glanced over at the man in question, humming curiously despite getting a vague feeling of whiplash from the sudden topic change.

"Yes," Haou mused, a serious look resettling quickly on his face before he set his now-empty mug down and turned his eyes back to Yusei, "I was wondering if you'd bring me to... what was it called?"

"An arcade."

"Yes, an arcade. Judai used to rant about them sometimes, saying that he wanted me to experience one, but that we didn't have the money to," he explained.

Personally, Yusei found it rather hilarious that he asked to go to an arcade of all places; he had such a serious expression on his face after all, and judging from Yubel's amused smirk he wasn't the only one who found the situation funny.

"Sure, I'll bring you. Judai has more than enough money for an arcade at this point," Yusei responded, smiling a bit before tilting his head and blinking in thought, "To be honest, I've never really gone to an arcade before either. I've only been in one once before, and that was because someone had hidden information we needed in a game there."

"Good, then we can learn about this place together," Haou stated, nodding his head seriously before standing from his chair. Yusei thought the man was just secretly glad he wasn't the only one that was unfamiliar with the place. With that, they both went about gathering their things, casually conversing about how exactly an arcade functions.

Meanwhile Yubel, who'd been staring at Yusei in disbelief, broke down in laughter at the two stoic men conversing so seriously about arcades of all things. Boy, she'd have a hell of a story to tell Judai later.


	31. Arcade Shenanigans

**_1/31/19_**

"This place is very... colorful," Haou said, taking in the multitudes of lights and games in the darkened building. Somewhere off in one section, black lights filled the room to make the wall's neon paint light up vibrantly.

Yusei hummed from where he was getting points using Judai's card - he'd tell him later, but for now he was the one with the most money and it was for Haou anyways. He made sure to get a lot so they wouldn't run out too soon.

"Here, you use this card to play the games, each one'll have a place to swipe it," Yusei said, handing him one of the two cards he had, "Since these are arcade games, they're either going to be rigged or extremely skill based, but seeing as neither of us know what any of them are... we'll just have to see."

Haou scoffed at that, "Well, if Judai wanted me to come to this place then he must have thought I'd find some part of it entertaining. Come, let's go."

Yubel floated along behind them, still sporting the same grin from before they'd left the apartment. Yusei wasn't too sure what to think of that, especially considering she'd called him _stoic_ of all things (he still couldn't really see it), but as long as everyone was happy he'd just go with it.

"I vaguely recall him saying something about you cheating your way through the system," Yubel chipped in, looking up in thought, "something about using your shadows to consistently beat the skill based games."

The two men blinked at her, narrowing their eyes in consideration.

"I admit that sounds relatively entertaining," Haou said, turning to Yusei, "What's the point here again?"

"To get enough prize tickets for whatever it is you want in the prize exchange area... Or to get prizes by winning at things like crane games. Apparently those are really difficult though, since the claws are designed to lose their grip easily," Yusei replied, remembering the few articles he'd stumbled across randomly while trying to find the parts list of a different machine - he didn't quite know how he'd gotten there, but he'd curiously looked over the different parts and programming of certain arcade machines because it was so foreign to him. "From what I've read, everything's basically designed to steal your money with either built-in chances of winning, faulty parts, or other things like that."

"Good," Haou said, eyes glinting suddenly in glee, "That means it's only fair to use my shadows to make up for any _advantages_ given beforehand."

"Makes sense to me," Yusei shrugged, not minding it much. It's not like anyone would be able to prove they were cheating if they were caught, after all, and the games were designed to be unfair anyways. At the very least, it would make this trip far more interesting - the previous Supreme King of Darkness, cheating at arcade games using the powers of darkness.

Yubel cackled with every new game they moved on to, though they were able to ignore it for the most part.

"So you throw these balls into the ring with the net attached to it?" Haou asked, staring dispassionately at the basketball cage in front of him.

"Yeah, it's called basketball," Yusei replied.

"...Why?"

"People find it fun, I guess. It's a sport, so like any sport there's people who find entertainment with it. Besides, this is one of those skill based games so it's probably satisfying for some people to do really well."

Haou swiped his card and started, and suddenly Yusei was very glad there was no one in the area around them at the moment; the shadows were shoving the three available basketballs through the hoop in a very fast, small, continuous loop. In other words, not very conspicuous at all.

After an hour and a half, they'd torn through nearly every game's previous high record, at least for the skill-based ones that weren't rigged. With skee ball Haou would just use the shadows to bump the ball into the hundred point slot every time, then on the coin pusher he just shoved all the coins off one section with a shadow when no one was looking. The most interesting one to Yusei was when the golden-eyed man had played a two-player game by himself, one where you had to press lit-up buttons as quickly as possible, by manipulating the shadows; Yusei just found it impressive that he was able to keep track of all the lights and hit so many without messing up a single time.

"So, this is a crane game?"

"Yup. You use the little stick here to move the claw, then press the button when you're ready to try grabbing at the prize. Here, let me try it once to show you what I was talking about earlier with the claws..."

"...The fuck? It just slid right off, it didn't even pick it up a little bit. Alright, move over Yusei."

"'Kay. Oh, make sure you grab all the card packs though at least, the sets that are in there have a lot of this time's commonly used cards. I know Judai hasn't gotten around to buying any yet."

Yubel was definitely getting her entertainment for the day, that's for sure - in between laughs, Yusei could vaguely hear her say something about him and Haou and how she just knew they would get along like a house on fire in between laughs.


	32. Prize Exchange

**_2/1/19_**

"That's... we have a lot more prize tickets than I initially thought," Yusei said, staring at the prize list by the prize exchange area. Considering the technological advancement of the time, it was easy enough to keep any prizes safely locked away in a storage area while replacing the outside shelves with holograms so nothing could get stolen. That, and lists of prizes for those who didn't want to miss anything were available to look at.

As it was, the most expensive thing on the list - some sort of board game that utilized holograms and was apparently very interactive - cost about half the tickets they'd- er, _Haou_ had earned. Yusei had mostly looked on with intrigue, after all, looking up different arcade game blueprints and programming details on his phone instead in order to figure out their secrets and relay them to the man.

"So? What are you guys going to get then?" Yubel asked, looking over their shoulders at the list, "You already cleaned out those claw machines of any booster packs they had, so it's not like you guys need to get more of those."

"Considering I don't need anything here, it's up to you," Haou stated before tapping on one section of the list for Yusei to look at, "...There's a section for that game you've been playing with Judai, for instance. Maybe get something from there."

"Really? That game doesn't have any micro-transactions except for aesthetic items and making cards prismatic," Yusei replied, looking over the list, "Yeah, it looks like these are codes for those types of things. Then again, Judai did say something about wanting an entirely prismatic deck, so... I guess I'll get forty of those codes."

Haou nodded, tapping away at the screen and adding forty to their cart. Still, that only used up half their points - the codes were low on the prize tier list after all, so even though they'd gotten forty it still added up to be about the same price as the board game.

"Hey, isn't that a plush toy of the dragon you own?" Yubel noticed, blinking at the page they'd moved to. It was full of different plush toys of different sizes, all of them duel monsters. The entire Kuriboh line was there, the Dark Magician line, Marshmallon, Moki Moki, and sure enough, plush versions of Yusei and Jack's dragons.

"It's Stardust alright," Yusei replied, "But it's huge - what would I do with it? The thing's three and a half feet tall."

"Put it on your bed or the couch or something, they listed the materials for it and it's surprisingly not bad quality," Yubel said, pointing at the screen.

"Works for me," Haou shrugged, putting one in the cart before Yusei could protest. Afterwards, he put in a huge Winged Kuriboh plush, which brought the total up to just under what they had. They were huge plush toys after all, they were much higher on the tier list and therefore more expensive.

Yusei sighed, accepting his fate. Soon enough, they had the codes emailed to Judai's email and huge plush toys in their arms; the prize exchange guy's eyes had widened rather hilariously at their prize ticket total before he realized he was looking at Yusei of all people and gaped speechlessly for a few moments. Luckily he had sped up the process out of embarrassment, not saying anything other than the standard 'Here's your prizes, have a good day.'

"Yusei, if you take a picture of Haou holding that Winged Kuriboh, Judai and I will be forever in your debt," Yubel hissed out lowly from where she was floating next to him, looking at the golden-eyed king who was poking curiously at the plush toy in his arms. Yusei didn't even hesitate at this point to take his phone out, taking a couple pictures to make sure at least one was good.

"I'll send it to Judai later," he muttered, putting his phone away quickly so he didn't accidentally drop it - the toy in his own arms made it difficult to maneuver around, "I'm just glad we went to a close one, so we walked. I have no idea how we'd get these back if we'd taken the bike."

It was a relief when they got back and finally could put the duel monster plushies down on the couch. Of course, Haou didn't seem to be affected by it much, but Yusei was going to assume his arms were a bit tired from how fast he'd been to put down the Winged Kuriboh.

Glancing at the clock, Yusei noted that they'd been there a lot longer than he'd thought - they'd left around noon, and now it was almost time for dinner. Of course, Yusei wasn't really in the mood to make anything at this point, but one of the first things Judai had done was clean the place out of any instant ramen.

Thus, time for Plan B.

"How's dessert for dinner sound? We've got vanilla and mint chocolate chip ice cream."

"Sounds good to me."

"Great, come on, I don't know how much you want."

"Literally all of the mint chocolate chip."

"...Well, guess it's a good thing I prefer vanilla then."

Haou later lazily turned to look at him from where he was leaning on the kitchen doorway, spoon digging methodically into his tub of ice cream. Yusei had actually gotten himself a bowl, considering he didn't think he could actually _that much_ ice cream, and was eating at a much slower pace than the other was.

"...Thanks," Haou eventually said, spoon hanging out of his mouth, "Today has been entertaining."

"No problem. Make sure you think of something else you want to do for next time, too," Yusei replied, giving him a smile.

Haou hummed at that before feeling Judai start to wake up in the back of his mind.

Next time, huh? Haou wouldn't mind that at all, to be honest, as he'd easily formed a friendship with the man; he felt Yubel agree with him through the mental connection.

Judai had gotten a good one.


	33. Judai Returns

_**2/2/19**_

"C-Could you repeat that?" Judai asked, staring wide-eyed at Yusei. He'd just switched back into control, Haou happily receding back and sleeping once he'd finished his tub of ice cream; if there was one thing they had in common, at least, it was their appetites. Yubel had gone with him, not really listening to the conversation anymore and choosing to rest as well.

Though, both of them hadn't done so without teasing Judai first, saying that they 'approved of his choice'. Once again, Judai had found himself pouting in embarrassment at them, although he couldn't ignore the small bit of relief that came with it; they liked Yusei, after all, so that was a major step in the right direction.

"We went to an arcade and... well, go look at the couch and your email," Yusei said, eating the last few bites of his ice cream before putting the bowl in the sink and following Judai out of the kitchen.

"Oh my gods, are those-"

"We may have gotten a lot of prize tickets. As in, Haou cheated at every game and we got twice as many tickets as the cost of the most expensive item available there," Yusei explained. Judai flung himself at the couch, hugging the two plushies tightly in happiness.

"They're so cute! Look at 'em Yusei, look- they're so squishy and the Winged Kuriboh is so fluffy!" Judai exclaimed, turning his body back over to face the raven-haired man, who'd moved to stand next to the couch, "Jeez, how long were you guys there for?! These things are huge, surely it took you guys a while to get that many prize tickets right?"

"Eh, we were there for about... four hours, give or take? We walked there so that tacks on an extra hour, so yeah - four hours," Yusei replied, shrugging slightly while giving the other duelist a smile, "That's not it though, remember?"

Judai blinked before realizing, "Oh yeah! You said to check my email, right? Wait, what does that have to do with anything?" He frowned in thought - aren't arcades only supposed to have physical rewards? Then again, this was the future after all, and there's probably a lot of stuff that could only be gotten online.

Well, only one way to find out, he supposed. With that he grabbed his phone out of his pocket, quickly tapping open his email and-

"No way."

Yusei laughed at that, giving him a wide grin, "Yes way. Haou and I didn't really have much need for physical stuff or prizes - the plush toys were actually the last things we put in so that we could just use up the tickets - so we got you this instead because we knew it'd get used."

"Yusei, we have to play tonight," Judai stated, barely holding in a squeal of delight as he smiled happily, "I'm going to use these on whatever cards we decide to use in our new tag-duel decks!" Yusei yelped when he was quickly pulled down onto the couch and given the biggest bear hug Judai could muster at the moment, considering the huge duel monster plushies that he was still holding onto. To his delight, Yusei hugged him back after adjusting himself so he was sitting more comfortably.

"I figured you'd say that," Yusei chuckled, bringing an arm up to ruffle his hair. Judai found himself melting again, the combination of Yusei, a warm hug, and fingers scratching softly at his head being too relaxing for him to even try to resist. When Yusei tried to move away after a few seconds so they could go get the headsets, Judai hugged him tighter in place, not wanting to move yet.

"I thought you wanted to play?" Yusei asked. Judai couldn't see him, seeing as his face was currently buried in the taller man's shoulder, but it was something he was glad for as he felt his face flush slightly in response to his actions.

"I- I do, but can we just stay like this for a bit longer?" he mumbled, burying his face further in embarrassment. Lucky for him, Yusei didn't pry any further and instead hummed in agreement, adjusting their positions slightly so they both were more comfortable before he went back to threading his fingers through Judai's hair.

Judai couldn't help but think that something this nice and so utterly relaxing should be illegal.


	34. Working Late

**_2/3/19_**

Yusei once again found himself on his laptop, engrossed in programs and data for putting the original reactor site back together - after all, the entire facility needed to work properly and efficiently for the reactor to be functional at all. Playing games with Judai was a nice way to relax, but really it was more of a short break than anything else. He would go right back to working most days, though admittedly not always on the reactor project; his motorcycle was sometimes his focus, while at others times it was personal project ideas he was hoping to eventually be able to patent or something.

Either way, he was tapping away at his laptop, his cup of coffee long since emptied and forgotten about in favor of focusing on his work. At least Yusei could say he truly enjoyed his work, unlike a lot of people in the world, so it's not like working for so long was a pain or anything.

"Yusei? Oi, Yusei..."

He blinked in confusion for a few moments before turning around to look at Judai, who yawned sleepily before rubbing at the sleep in his eyes.

"Oh, did I wake you up? Sorry," he said, smiling at the cute scene, "The typing can get kind of loud sometimes."

Judai stared at him uncomprehendingly for a few seconds, briefly looking at his phone before turning his gaze back to Yusei.

"Did you not sleep?" Judai asked sleepily, "It's like, six thirty in the morning."

Yusei glanced back at the clock on the wall and sure enough, it read that it was just reaching six thirty. Now that he was thinking about, he felt really tired, most likely due to the combination of both no sleep and coming down off a coffee high.

"Ah... I guess I didn't notice," he replied, slumping down slightly from the sudden wave of tiredness. Judai huffed at him before getting up and walking over.

"Alright, come on," Judai said, bopping him lightly on the head, "get up and go to bed, you look like you're about to fall asleep in your chair."

Yusei sighed at that, closing his eyes for a moment before hauling himself up and out of his chair. He really didn't want to have to go up the stairs right now though, so he did the next best thing instead - he walked over to the couch and flopped down on it, the Winged Kuriboh plushy serving as a rather comfortable pillow. Judai had followed after him, looking on in amusement from the side of the couch.

Suddenly, Yusei's sleep-deprived brain came up with what he's sure was the most brilliant idea he'd had to date.

"I mean, I guess that works too," Judai mused, the smile more in his voice right now than in his face considering he was still not fully awake at this point, "I was going to go make breakfast eventu-"

He yelped quietly in surprise as he was pulled down onto the couch and easily moved so Yusei was comfortably hugging him. Yusei could finally get his revenge for the other day! Yes! Well, that and Judai was like a living heater at the moment - he'd noticed it when he came over and hit him on the head.

Also, considering what had happened a few days beforehand where Judai was insistent on continuing to hug, Yusei didn't really feel bad about doing this, regardless of how sleepy he was; he was pretty confident at this point that Judai would like this as much as he did, or at least wouldn't reject it outright.

"Y-Yusei-" Judai hissed out quietly in shock, face flushing a light pink as Yusei continued adjusting him to the point that it felt like he was cuddling a teddy bear instead.

"You're warm. Be quiet and just go to sleep," Yusei stated, digging his head further into the make-shift pillow behind him before closing his eyes and slowly drifting away. He felt Judai mumble out a few more protests before he relaxed in his arms, evidently still tired enough to be able to go back to sleep from the way his breathing soon leveled out.

Now _this_ was a damn nice way to fall asleep - Yusei felt like he was in cloud nine for those last few lucid moments before he was out like a light.


	35. Picture Time

**_2/4/19_**

Crow stopped short at the top of the stairs just outside his room, staring at the scene below before quietly rushing into Jack's room at eight o'clock in the morning.

"Jack! Jack get out here, you have to come look at this! And be quiet about it," he hissed out between his teeth, gesturing frantically for the other man to get up from where he was scanning over some news articles online. The blonde blinked back in confusion before grunting and following Crow out the door, stopping the same way Crow had just seconds earlier.

"Shit- Crow get the fucking camera, the _good one, hurry_ -" he said, glad he'd taken his phone with him and already taking pictures. Crow scurried away into his room, re-emerging about thirty seconds later with the single high-quality camera they owned in this apartment. With shit-eating grins, they hurried as fast as they could down the stairs while avoiding all the creaky floor boards.

"This is it, Jack. If they aren't together within the next few days then something's wrong with this world," Crow whispered, getting the perfect picture from just across the coffee table next to the couch.

"Are you kidding me? Try by the end of today, there's no way they can be oblivious anymore after _this_ ," Jack replied, raising an eyebrow at him, "Just look at them, when they wake up in a few hours they're going to have to admit it."

Crow hummed in agreement at that one, "True. Considering Yusei hasn't woken up yet I think it's safe to say they only went to sleep about two or so hours ago; Yusei's a light sleeper, there's no way he'd sleep through us talking unless he's smack-dab in the middle of deep sleep."

At some point after they'd fallen asleep, Judai had shifted from being next to Yusei to being partially squished underneath him. Yusei was still wrapped around the shorter man, though at this point their legs were tangled and Judai had moved his single free arm to hug him back. The raven-haired man had dug his face down into the side of Judai's neck while the other rested his head against it. The Winged Kuriboh plushy had been pushed slightly to the side and at some point, the Stardust Dragon plushy had fallen from its position on the top of the couch to being used as an additional pillow instead.

"That's... true. We both know Yusei needs all the sleep he can get, maybe now he'll get more now that he has a reason to go to bed in the first place," Jack stated, his eyes glinting in mirth as Crow barely managed to choke back a laugh at the sudden joke.

"Come on, we should probably get out of here before we wake them up," Crow said, putting the camera back in its case before putting the whole thing in his work bag. Jack huffed out an agreement, following him out the door and to the garage.

"Breakfast?"

"Oh yeah, hey we can just go get it together. Where do you wanna go?"

Jack snorted in response, "Where do you think, idiot?"

Crow groaned at that, feeling like he'd regret this twenty minutes from now but... well, maybe it was about time he at least _tried_ a Blue Eyes White Mountain Coffee.

"Fine, y'know what? Show me what's so great about this uppity, posh cafe you're so obsessed with."

Jack may be glaring at him, but the twitching smile Crow was seeing gave away his excitement pretty easily.


	36. Stars Aligned

**_2/5/19_**

Judai grumbled as he slowly came back to wakefulness, huddling a bit closer to the warmth surrounding him. This was easily the safest and most relaxed he'd felt in a long time, and-

Wait, why was it so nice and warm?

He blearily cracked open his eyes, the bottom corner of his vision partially obscured by black hair, before jolting fully awake. He barely noted that his heart had started pounding fast as he turned his head to stare owlishly at Yusei, who was still sleeping and blissfully unaware of Judai's increasingly frantic thoughts.

Right, he'd woken up, told Yusei to go to bed, then next thing he knew he was pulled onto the couch and strong-armed into being the other's stuffed animal. How the hell had he managed to fall asleep again like this?! He couldn't even move at this point without accidentally waking Yusei up, and that was the last thing he wanted to do at this point since he seriously needed his sleep. A quick glance at the clock told him it was coming up on one o'clock in the afternoon, so that was what, six and a half hours?

Yeah, he needed at least that last half hour to make it an even seven. Judai felt like dying internally at this point, half an hour was going to be forever at this rate-

Okay, no, deep breaths. He slowly managed to relax over the next few minutes, not quite managing to fully relax but at least he wasn't rigid in shock anymore.

He gulped and took another deep breath before opening his eyes again and turning to look back at Yusei. He couldn't see much of his face at all, considering it was buried in his neck (which kind-of tickled now that he thought about it), but he could see little bits of his left eye and the tip of the triangle part of his marker.

Before doing anything else he quickly checked up on Haou and Yubel and- yup, they were both walled-off. Clearly they'd had their laughs already and were now giving him some privacy, thank the gods and the stars above.

Softly, he brushed aside the strands of hair obscuring Yusei's face, giving him a better view of the side of it. He chewed on his lip in nervousness as he contemplated about what he was thinking of doing, emotions swirling like a storm inside him; he really had fallen hard for Yusei, hadn't he?

With one last deep breath, Judai placed a quick kiss on the other's cheek, just below where the little triangle of his marker was placed. It was soft, quick, and soundless, but it made him feel giddy regardless.

Suddenly he was staring into half-lidded, shining blue eyes and a set of lips was pressing eagerly into his. Before he could even register what was happening, his eyes had closed naturally and he was already pressing back, his free hand moving up to grip at the other's upper arm. After a few seconds they pulled apart, Judai barely remembering to open his eyes back up now that his heart was back to pounding rapidly - his breath felt like it'd been stolen away.

Their foreheads were still touching, soft breaths bouncing off each other's lips as they stared into each other's eyes. Judai felt his face burn red, unable to tear his gaze away - not that he wanted to in the first place. Yusei's eyes seemed like they were sparkling to him, a brilliant blue he could stare into for days without getting tired of seeing them.

"Judai," Yusei breathed, reaching up a hand to brush the hair away from his face with just as much gentleness as Judai had used earlier. Soon enough he cupped his face, leaning back in for another kiss - this time a much softer one that lasted much longer. At some point Yusei had moved so he was fully on top so he had a better angle, their fingers twining together without much thought having to be put into it. When they finally pulled apart again both were sporting flushed faces, though they both seemed to be much more relaxed.

"I love you," Judai whispered, squeezing their hands together tighter as a small smile found its way onto his face. He let out a little noise of surprise as he was suddenly pulled up and forwards so he was sitting on Yusei's lap instead, legs on either side of him.

"I love you too," Yusei said, his smile slowly turning into a silly grin as he let go of his hands to wrap around his waist instead. With a soft laugh Judai reached his arms up around his neck so he could pull him down slightly and kiss him again. He felt like he was going to burst from happiness, finally being able to act on his feelings and have them returned.

After a few minutes Yusei paused, looking at him with a teasing grin, "Are you crying?"

"S-shut up- I'm not crying, I'm just really happy right now!" Judai laughed, barely managing to keep a pout on his face for a second before he broke out into a beaming smile again. Truth was he was tearing up a little bit from all these emotions hitting him at once, but considering they were all happy ones it wasn't that bad.

Yusei chuckled, bringing a hand up and wiping the few tears away from the corners of his eyes before leaning down to pepper Eskimo kisses all over his face, making him laugh more.

"Y'know, I think that's the best sleep I've ever gotten in my life," Yusei said, pulling Judai back into a relaxed hug. Judai hummed in agreement, resting his head on his shoulder before pausing in thought and bringing his head back up.

"Yeah, and I think that's the most I've ever been manhandled in my life!" Judai stated, pouting while struggling not to laugh, "You're bossy when you're tired, damn."

Yusei raised his eyebrows at him in response, "Bossy? It's not my fault you were basically a walking heater at the time, and you're too cute to resist hugging you. Whatever was I supposed to do in that case?"

Judai gave him a playful glare before realizing what he'd said, his face heating up as he buried his face back into his shoulder while Yusei laughed at him once more. He swore he'd get him back for that one soon, very soon.

In the meantime though... his stomach growled, and he looked sheepishly up at blue eyes filled with mirth.

"...How's food sound?" Judai asked.

Yusei just hummed in response, and suddenly Judai found himself being pulled back into another round of kisses.


	37. Moving Spaces

**_2/6/19_**

"I think we overslept. I'm still super tired for some reason," Judai mumbled, leaning his head on Yusei's side while slowly nibbling on a curry bun.

"You're the one that overslept, not me. I only slept for a bit over six hours," Yusei replied. He was typing away at his laptop as he'd already finished eating, looking up database info for the VR game. So far he'd found a list of all available cards and cosmetic items and was currently scrolling slowly down the list, making note of any interesting ones.

Judai hummed, taking another bite before pointing to an item on the screen. Yusei stopped scrolling so he could look at it closer, and he realized it was the rings they'd gotten from the hidden quest.

"Unique item, unknown how to acquire... Guess this list isn't fully complete, they seem to have pulled all the item IDs, pictures, and functions, but none of the other stuff unless it's common knowledge," Yusei mused, clicking away to look at the card list real fast to check if Clear Wing and Crystal Wing were listed there. They were, but it was only in name - they didn't even have a picture or description.

"We haven't actually used them yet in a duel, so maybe finally get our decks in order and use them it'll become public info," Judai said, finishing off his food and throwing the wrapper into the trashcan next to the desk. The shorter duelist yawned, leaning more into Yusei as he kept looking at the screen, "Hey, check out the forums real fast, I wonder if we're still a hot topic or not."

"From how everyone reacted at the tournament a few days ago, I'd say it definitely still is," Yusei said, moving over to the official forum site. Sure enough, there was an entire sub-forum filled with threads talking about them, speculating about who exactly Judai was, what the quest they'd completed was, and a slew of other questions revolving around the duo.

Yusei stopped at one post's title, staring it in confusion for a few seconds before glancing over at Judai and clicking on it.

 _Okay, Someone Correct Me If I'm Wrong, But Are These Two Proof That In-Game Marriage Exists?!_

 _thesupremehero_and_starsavior__

 _Look at this screenshot of the two, they both have rings on their fingers! When you look at their item equip list they're called Starry Rings, and only have an effect when they're super close to each other. Does this mean they're married or something? Did the quest they complete do that? I just wonder what other stuff that legendary quest gave them, did it give them anything else that they can only use together? This seems a lot like one of those couples quests from other games. They even have matching icons before their names! Please tell me I'm not the only one thinking this!_

"Is- Is that what we've looked like this whole time?" Yusei asked, blinking slightly in shock at how many people had responded to this single post and just how many thought it was true, "I never even gave a second thought about them being rings."

"Me neither, but I guess this just means it was meant to be from the start?" Judai said, taking over the mouse and starting to scroll down the rest of the post. Yusei felt him start to laugh at the responses as they went further down the comments section, each one becoming more and more joking about the whole thing. One even nailed it when they said that they bet the two were completely oblivious to the implications, a whole group of people jumping on-board with the idea and making jokes about it, complete with edited versions of the picture in the original post.

"Well, at least we know what to look out for next time we have to talk about our in-game stuff," Yusei said, taking the mouse back from Judai once he was done having his fun and shutting down the laptop for the time being, "Anyways, help me grab your stuff."

"Eh? Why?" Judai asked, blinking up at him in confusion. It was adorable and Yusei couldn't help a smile before leaning down to give him a quick kiss on the forehead.

"Obviously you're staying in my room, there's no way I'm letting you sleep on the couch anymore. It'll be _our_ room from now on."

"O-Oh, right, that makes sense," he responded, his face turning a slight pink. Yusei pulled him in this time for an actual kiss, humming when Judai wrapped his arms around his neck to pull him closer.

"Like I said earlier, you're too cute to resist," Yusei mused when they pulled apart, tucking the other's hair behind his ear once again so he could see his flustered face clearer. The pout and glare he got only added to the scene.

"Yeah, and I'm still going to get you back somehow when I'm not so tired, I hope you realize this," Judai huffed, and despite his words, he pulled Yusei into a hug while burying his face into his chest. The taller duelist laughed softly, pulling him up off the chair after a bit and running his fingers through his hair.

"Come on, the sooner we get this done the sooner we can go back to working on our decks. You did say you wanted to do that after we ate," Yusei said, smiling down at Judai when he finally tore himself away so they could move his bags into their room.

 _Their_ room; Yusei really liked the sound of that, he mused, as he watched the brown-haired man sleepily climb the stairs before him. Now _that_ was something he could easily get used to.


	38. Crow and Jack Return

**_2/7/19_**

They never actually got around to playing the VR game, considering Judai was too tired to really think about their deck compositions. Instead, Judai found himself seated in the kitchen surrounded by different types of coffee.

"You do know I've been all over Europe, right? I've tried so many different types of coffee, I think by now I'd know if I actually liked it, which I don't," Judai stated, raising his eyebrow at Yusei, who was standing across the table from him.

"Why not?" Yusei asked in response, fiddling with the jars containing the coffee grounds while trying to decide on one. Judai may not like coffee much, but Yusei clearly did and apparently thrived off it, so he'd bought actual coffee grounds for him so that he wasn't drinking instant coffee anymore.

"Too bitter, and the flavored ones aren't too much better either. Cream doesn't do much for me and most days I don't need the caffeine boost."

"You definitely need one today though, so help me pick one. I'll try to make it more to your liking."

"You do realize it's already four o'clock in the afternoon, right?" Judai responded with a sigh, realizing he was quickly losing the little battle they were having, "Vanilla, I guess."

Yusei smiled at that, picking up the jar of vanilla coffee grounds and quickly brewing up two cups of coffee. Judai watched him fondly for a few moments before closing his eyes for a bit - he was tired, after all, and not used to oversleeping. Under-sleeping yes, as he still had the occasional nightmare or two, but certainly not oversleeping.

Before he knew it Yusei was setting a mug in front of him and sitting down by his side, huddled close enough that they were touching but just far enough so they could drink their drinks without bumping into each other. Taking a peek at the liquid, Judai blinked sleepily, noting that it was a _really_ light brown; either way, he shrugged and took a sip under Yusei's watchful gaze.

He stopped for a second at the sweetness of it, taking another sip before humming out happily. He saw Yusei grin in victory next to him, finally starting to drink his own mug of coffee.

"What the hell did you put in this to get it this sweet?" he asked, taking another long sip. It was way sweeter than anything he'd had before, and he really liked it - he had to wonder if it was actually still coffee he was drinking.

Yusei stared at him a moment in thoughtfulness from behind his mug before answering him with a playful gleam in his eyes, "Trade secret."

"...Really Yusei?"

"Truly," he responded, nodding as seriously as he possibly could. Judai gave him a dirty look, but he knew it was probably ruined due to how quickly he went back to enjoying his coffee. Once they'd both finished, they put the mugs in the sink and made their way back to browsing on Yusei's laptop.

Suddenly Judai realized something, looking over at the couch from where they were seated at the desk, then at the upstairs. He blamed the caffeine for finally kicking in and making him aware of this predicament - why couldn't he have just remained oblivious to this?

"Oh gods," Judai mumbled, continuing to stare at the couch before burying his face in his hands.

"What's wrong?" Yusei asked confusedly.

"Jack and Crow, they most definitely saw us this morning," Judai groaned, looking up at Yusei, "They're going to come back and then who knows what they're going to do."

Yusei stared for a moment before comprehension dawned over his face, his eyes widening slightly as a slight look of horror came over him. This, of course, did not make Judai feel better in the slightest about the inevitable conversation that would take place.

"How screwed are we?" Judai asked, fearing the answer.

"They're going to lord this over us for weeks," Yusei replied, a bit of dread lacing into his voice. He sighed, composing himself again; Judai found himself in a reassuring hug soon after, fingers threading through his hair while Yusei rest his head on top of his. "At least they're gone for most of the day anyways, so it won't be too bad."

Judai hummed at that, though he was less focused on his words at the moment and far more focused on how he was playing with his hair. He'd have to try it on the taller man instead soon, especially now that he knew how nice of a feeling it was.

Of course, this was right when the door to the apartment slammed open. Crow and Jack looked at them, grins splitting across their faces the second they saw how close the two were.

"I'm guessing you two a thing now?" Jack asked, and Judai just felt like dying of embarrassment.

"Yup," Yusei responded, tightening his grip slightly on Judai in reassurance.

It didn't really help much though, since Crow's reaction made Judai want to crawl into a hole and hide forever.

"FINALLY! Hallelujah! It's about time, holy crap, how long were we waiting for this Jack?!"

"Eh... a month or so now?"

"We've been waiting for this moment for a month! A _month_! Now, smile for the picture you two!"

"W-Wait, guys-" Yusei tried to cut in, but to both his and Judai's despair, there wasn't any way to get out of this situation as Crow pulled a camera out of nowhere and immortalized their embarrassment.


	39. Sharing A Room

**_2/8/19_**

They finally managed to escape the teasing after a bit, locking themselves into their room before the other two could even think about doing so anymore. Luckily Yusei had managed to grab his laptop before they'd left, so they were able to do what they originally intended on doing before they were interrupted and browse the rest of the item list together; they crawled up on the bed and cuddled comfortably while doing so, Judai curling into Yusei's side while Yusei held him there by wrapping an arm around him.

"How about that one?" Judai asked, pointing out a rather detailed navy jacket. He thought it would go really well with the capes they'd gotten, which were black on the outside but a light blue on the inside with white stars splattered across it.

"Let's see... obtainable from the Duel Arena Shop, so if we want it we're going to have to start dueling against other people," Yusei said, adding it to the small list of items they'd been interested in. Really though, they were mostly Judai's suggestions since Yusei didn't care all that much about how he looked - Judai on the other hand was all for trying out all the things they possibly could because he was _still_ hyped up over how cool virtual world duel monsters were.

"Well, it's not like we're making our new decks for nothing, so that'll be fun," Judai replied, grinning up at Yusei who gave him a smile in return.

"If you want to, we could log in now and finish up our decks so we can start dueling the next time we play," Yusei suggested, "It's not like we'll be leaving this room for the rest of today anyway."

It was tempting, especially now that he was awake, but then Judai thought about that one forum post they'd read and thought otherwise; he didn't really want to deal with any other people right now, even indirectly.

"Nah, I just wanna spend time with you," Judai said, grinning as he closed the laptop and moved it to the side table before flopping on top of Yusei, "Besides, it's been like two hours since I drank that coffee right? How long does the caffeine last again?"

"About four hours, once that's over you're gonna crash," Yusei replied, arms easily winding around Judai to position him so his elbow was no longer digging into his chest. Judai hummed before suddenly remembering his earlier claim about getting back at Yusei for flustering him so much - now was his chance to do so!

"Well then," Judai mused, moving so that this time he was the one on top, his arms on either side of the raven-haired man's head, "that means I've got two hours to figure out your weak spots." He grinned happily in success when Yusei's face flushed a light pink, slightly-wide blue eyes blinking up at him in confusion.

"...Weak spots?" Yusei asked.

"It's only fair," Judai answered slightly indignantly, using one hand to start threading lightly at the other's hair, making sure his fingers scratched softly against his head, "After all, you've already been abusing one of mine with the way you've been playing with my hair so much."

He watched in wonder as the man under him seemed to melt like putty under his hand, instinctively closing his eyes and pushing his head more into his fingers. Humming, he complied and started to scratch ever-so slightly harder and faster at his scalp, eliciting a soft noise of content from the raven-haired male; this also seemed to be about the time that Yusei realized what he was doing because his face flushed a deep red and his eyes popped open like he'd been startled.

Judai just grinned wickedly at the sight, fully enjoying the fact that Yusei was getting a taste of his own medicine now. Yusei glared at him playfully in response, though just like Judai had earlier, was unable to hold it very long when faced with the continuous relaxing feeling of fingers threading through his hair.

"You're like a cat," Judai said, reveling in the moment, "I wonder, if I put cat ears on you would get even cuter than you are now?"

"...Not fair," Yusei said, pouting slightly, "You're the cute one, not me."

Judai scoffed at that, "Like hell you're not cute, have you ever seen your smile? Or the way you tilt your head slightly and blink when you're confused? Or how you look when you're so focused on your computer stuff? You're adorable, Yusei."

He decided not to give him a chance to answer, leaning down to smother his cute face with kisses before finally silencing his protests with a long, hard kiss on the lips.

"Alright, now repeat after me," Judai grinned, catching his breath before Yusei could since he was the one that pulled back first, "'I, Yusei Fudo, am adorable, handsome, and drop-dead gorgeous.'"

"W-Wait, Judai-"

"Nuh uh, you're not getting out of this! Now say it, and you have to meet my eyes while doing it!"

Eventually he stuttered it out, mumbling slightly, but Judai could let that pass - he'd prevented Yusei from covering his flushed face while doing it, after all, and seeing that was was really all he needed to be satisfied. He continued having his fun until he inevitably had the tables turned on him, the pattern repeating until suddenly the caffeine crash hit and they went to sleep early, happily curled up into each other under the covers.


	40. Planning Out The Day

**_2/9/19_**

Waking up the next morning was even better than it had been the day before, but only because they were actually in a warm bed this time instead of being on a couch. Yusei was the first up, like he'd been the day before, but this time he didn't hesitate to bring a hand up and fiddle with the other's hair lightly, which earned him a mumble from Judai as he unconsciously curled closer towards him.

It was very relaxing, and he couldn't help but feel slightly like he was floating despite how calm he felt at the moment. He turned his gaze for a moment over to the small window in his room, noting that there was only a tiny shred of light shining through the curtains; looking over at the clock confirmed that it was still very early in the morning, which made sense considering how they'd gone to sleep early in the first place.

He didn't have to wait too long for the brown-haired male to wake up, and he watched amusedly at how the other grumbled and buried his head under Yusei's.

"Why is it already morning...?" Judai mumbled, his words coming out muffled besides Yusei's head. Yusei laughed slightly as he held him a bit tighter.

"It's not just morning, it's very early morning," he replied, eliciting another groan from Judai.

"Can we just sleep more?" Judai asked, pulling back slightly so he could blink blearily at Yusei. It was quite adorable, and Yusei found himself tugging him into a lazy kiss. He grinned at how Judai perked up at that, making a little noise of surprise before suddenly finding the strength to move his limbs so he could get a better grip on him. Yusei wasn't surprised when the other quickly moved so he was on top of him, and when they pulled apart, grinning with a happy glint in his eyes.

"If I'm like a cat, then you're like a fox," Yusei mused, tilting his head slightly with a fond smile as he looked up at him.

Judai leaned down closer, his hair tickling Yusei's face as he questioned, "And why's that?"

"You're easily excitable, and you're quite playful," he answered, reaching up to tug at both sides of his face, "That, and you get these looks all the time when you're enjoying something that can only be described as 'foxy', like the grin you're giving me right now." Judai frowned playfully in response to the cheek pulling, which only further added to his point.

"I guess that's better than being called a dog, I've been compared to one before."

"They just didn't know you well enough, then."

Judai escaped his grasp, sitting up and back onto his hands before looking over at the clock on the wall.

"It really is early, isn't it?" He said, moving to the side off of Yusei's legs so he could sit up as well. Yusei nodded, stretching lazily and humming when he felt some bones pop. "What are your plans for the day?"

"Don't really have any, was just going to work more," he replied, "Though if you want to do something then we can do that, it's not really important for me to get done today."

"Huh... then do you mind if we go to another arcade? It's a different one, and it's more game-focused than prize-focused like the one you went to with Haou. I wanna see all the new stuff that's been made! Rhythm games, duel-based games, there's bound to be some interesting ones with all this technology."

"I don't mind. We should leave early by the way, we can just grab food somewhere on the way."

"Eh? Why?"

Yusei stared deadpan at him, "I'd rather give the other two living here some more time to cool down than be at their mercy again."

The grimace and serious nod he got in response was quickly matched by his own, though they couldn't hold each others' eyes for more than two seconds before they broke down into soft laughter.

"Alright, you go get ready first, give me the name and I'll figure out where I'm going in the mean time," Yusei said, pulling his laptop over from the side table.

"Mmk, sounds good to me. It's called the Neo Domino Pixel Arcade- oh! While we're there, I think there's a place near there where there's supposed to be good breakfast pastries. I can't remember the name though, just that it's close by," Judai responded, giving Yusei another peck on the lips before he wandered off to go get ready. Yusei smiled at that, getting to work on finding the place while also doing a bit of extra research on the side on if there was anything else that they needed to know - after all, the mechanical knowledge of arcade games had helped him before, so it would probably help him again, even if the games were going to be significantly more skill-based.


	41. Breakfast

**_2/10/19_**

Yusei took back everything he'd said earlier about Judai being a distracting presence while he was riding his bike - that'd been nothing compared to now, making their way to the cafe Judai'd been talking about.

"...Do you want me to crash, Judai?" he grumbled into the headset, doing his best to focus on the road. All he got in return was an unapologetic, devilish laugh that he could feel rumble through his back; the arms around his waist stayed fastened in place while Judai's hands continued to poke curiously at his sides. Not only that, but he could feel the other's warm breaths as they tickled his neck - there was no way he wasn't doing this on purpose, and Yusei was sure that if he'd been able to look back and see his face right now there'd be a wicked grin on it.

After all, one of the things he'd been forced to suffer through last night was Judai learning that his neck was seriously sensitive, and clearly he was taking full advantage of that right now.

A random switch to cold breaths made him physically flinch, and he felt his face burn at the small squeak he'd let out; he knew it'd picked up on the headsets because Judai chuckled immediately after, going back to passive, warm breathing.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," he mumbled, the arms around his waist tightening for a moment to show that he'd been heard. He was starting to learn that a silent, solely-laughing Judai was something to be terrified of.

Luckily it only took another ten minutes to get to the cafe, but those ten minutes were filled with random bursts of cold air on his neck, continuous pokes at his sides, and just overall embarrassment. Yusei glared playfully at Judai once their helmets were off and safely locked away, and sure enough, Judai wasn't even trying to act innocent at this point as he stared back with a foxy grin.

"Cute," Judai stated, grinning wider as Yusei immediately caught the hand that came up to try and poke at his side. He found himself laced hand-in-hand with the shorter male instead soon after and being tugged into the cafe behind him, "Come on, I'm starving! Food..."

Yusei rolled his eyes and smiled fondly when Judai immediately went over to the pastry display case and practically drooled over it trying to decide what he wanted. He busied himself with looking over the coffee menu instead, blinking when he saw a familiar name.

Huh, so this must be where Jack always goes - now he kind of wanted to try it just to see if it really was as good as the blond made it out to be.

"You decide on anything yet?" Yusei asked.

"Hmm, yeah I think I got it," Judai replied, following closely behind him as he went to the counter to order. The cashier working there looked up at their approach, staring at them for a second before grinning wildly.

"Aw man, first yesterday and now this? This is great, we're finally getting to meet all of Jack's infamous roommates," she said, nodding at them.

"I was right, this _is_ the place he wanders off to all the time," Yusei said, blinking in slight confusion, "What do you mean by infamous?"

"Oh Jack's a complainer and likes to prattle on to us about his life problems, though you can tell he's really fond of you guys - he always tells stories about how his 'idiot roommate Yusei never sleeps or gets off his laptop' and how 'stupid Crow won't stop pestering me about getting a job'," she responded, using air-quotes to emphasize, "Yesterday he brought Crow with him and it was absolutely hilarious. Those two can argue about anything and everything, and once Crow learned he actually 'deigned to talk to other people for once in his life' he pulled out crocodile tears and gloated about how proud he was; we'd never seen Jack look so off kilter before."

Yusei and Judai laughed at that as they were able to imagine the scene perfectly.

"Yeah, that definitely sounds like them, just be glad you don't have to live with them," Yusei chuckled. After a bit more small-talk their order was placed and they sat down at a table towards the back corner so they could enjoy the peace and quiet.

"Y'know, maybe Jack's not the only drama queen. I'm starting to think Crow's one as well," Judai said, fiddling happily with his cup of peppermint hot chocolate that he'd decided on.

Yusei hummed, taking a sip of his coffee before answering, "It's because he works with kids so much at the orphanage. He gets along with them really well and fills the role of 'playful older brother' for them."

"Ooh, that makes sense! Now that I think about it, whenever I found a kid that could see spirits, it was always easier to get them to listen if I decided to be a bit dramatic about it."

"Were there a lot of people that could see spirits?" Yusei asked curiously, thinking about the numerous psychic duelists he'd encountered, "There was a whole organization here at one point that was filled with psychic duelists, though none of them could see spirits and could only materialize them using their cards. I only know one person besides us that can actually see duel spirits, and she can't materialize them."

"That's odd," Judai frowned, looking back up at him, "Usually there's significantly more people who can see spirits than materialize them. That's... something to look into later. Maybe it has to do with all the duel energy flowing through this place?"

Yusei watched as he continued to mumble in thought for a bit longer, eventually shrugging before taking another sip of his drink.

"Ah well, I'll worry about that later," Judai stated, suddenly grinning once more and sending Yusei a wink, "I've got a cute boyfriend to focus on- oh hey, this is a date, isn't it?"

Yusei blinked at that, feeling his face warm slightly as he looked away to the side.

"If you want it to be," he replied, taking a sip of his coffee so that he could hide his face - even if it was just a little bit, it made him feel a bit less embarrassed. He felt Judai kick him lightly under the table in reassurance, and when he looked back, Judai was smiling softly.

"'course I do, dummy, that's not even a question - I love doing anything as long as it's with you."

Yusei smiled back happily at that, responding with a hum of agreement, "Me too."

He couldn't help the tiny bit of satisfaction he felt when Judai's face turned a bit pink as well, though the other was much better at pretending his embarrassment didn't exist.


	42. Kings of Games

**_2/11/19_**

The games at this particular arcade could be logged into with account cards, so the first thing they did was go over to a side machine and create their accounts.

"Account created!~ This ought to be fun, we can come back again and pick up where we left off!" Judai hummed happily, sending Yusei a wide grin. The other male smiled back at him, finishing up his account creation as well before letting himself be dragged away as Judai tried to figure out what game to play first. There were an awful lot of them too, and all new ones that he'd never heard of before - rhythm games, shooting games, strategy games... probably best to start simple with a rhythm game.

"Y'know, we have a legacy to live up to," Judai noted, picking out a game that required you to hit notes on a fake piano, "Yugi wasn't called the King of Games for nothin' after all."

"Wait, you mean he was literally the King of all Games?" Yusei asked, staring at him in surprise. Judai nodded with a grin, starting up the game and talking while playing.

"Yup! He was good at everything! Card games, video games, board games, all types of games - the only times he's actually lost since splitting with the Pharaoh were to me, but that's because I'm his heir and technically hold the title as well. Apparently it's got a bit to do with the title itself since it's magical," he explained, tapping away and quickly getting down how to play, "Basically, anyone who holds the title will be very, very good at duel monsters and have a high rate of learning for all other games."

"And you're sure that... I also hold the title?" Yusei continued after Judai finished his game. Judai really didn't like the hesitance he heard in his voice and turned to look him dead in the eyes.

"You absolutely do, there's no doubt about it," he said as seriously as possible, poking him in the chest for emphasis, "If you need more technical proof, then here - remember the thing with your core? Once the corruption was removed, it started emitting duel energy the same way Yugi's and mine do. Basically, a King of Game's core will leak a certain amount of energy to its surroundings that _doesn't_ disappear. This is something I've only ever seen in us three; duel energy leaks from anyone else simply don't stick around."

"I guess so, but I'd probably believe it easier if I could see it for myself..." Yusei replied, frowning in thought, "That and I don't think I'll really be good at other games, and I've only recently come to accept that I'm the best at duel monsters in my generation- ow!"

Judai flicked him in the forehead, sending him an annoyed look, "Remember what I said? High rate of learning for all other games. We're both going to suck at all the games in here at first, but after a few hours we're going to be setting new records." Yusei clearly didn't believe him much, but he was willing to bet he would by the end of the day.

Ironically, after only an hour of trying out a bunch of new games, Yusei was the first to set a new top score and on a bullet-hell game at that. The look on his face was priceless as he blinked at the screen in disbelief, and Judai was quick to raise an eyebrow at him, biting back a grin at being proven right.

"There's no way, that felt easy right up until the end there," Yusei mumbled, "That was only my second time playing it too."

"I did tell you that this would happen, you're a King of Games just like me after all."

Yusei sighed after a few moments, finally looking back over at him with an unreadable look - Judai looked back in clear confusion, trying to figure out what he was thinking. Eventually though, the taller male gave him a small smile, tugging him forwards to give him a quick peck on the forehead.

"Sorry, it's just that it feels a little bit like cheating," Yusei admitted.

Oh, so that's what it was? Judai understood now, considering he'd felt like that for a while as well once he'd learned about the title's magic, but Yugi had helped him with understanding what it really meant to hold the title during his stay with him.

"I felt like that for a bit when I learned about it too, but the way it actually works is that the magic just amplifies your abilities - you have to already have a significantly above-average rate of learning for certain games in order to be designated the title in the first place," Judai explained, quickly going on his toes to peck him on the lips, "So don't worry about it, okay? Besides, it just means that we're evenly matched now, and that makes everything more fun."

Yusei's eyes shined at that, glinting when he gave him a mischievous grin that made Judai's heart race at how handsome made the other male look.

"Well then, let's make a bet - whoever wins the most games here gets to make the other do whatever they want one time."

"Oho, so that's how you want play? You're on, dear, just don't get too embarrassed when you lose to me."


	43. Obligatory DDR

**_2/12/19_**

"Oh hey, so they do still have this!" Judai exclaimed happily, tugging Yusei over to the DDR machine in the back of the second floor of the arcade, "Man, this game's a classic! I think I'd be more surprised if there wasn't one, to be honest..."

"How do you play it?" Yusei asked, swiping his card next to Judai. The lucky bastard had won the past two games, and the way they'd structured the bet was that the winner would be whoever managed to win three games in a row first. They'd continuously been trading wins, though, so two hours into the bet neither had been able to win yet.

"See the four arrow pads on the ground? It's like the other rhythm game we played earlier with the bars coming up, except you have to hit the corresponding arrow or arrows with your feet."

"Ah, got it. Practice round?"

"Yup. Any song requests?"

Yusei gave him an exasperated look that Judai laughed at, grinning while going through the song list. Eventually he found one that wasn't too fast, but not slow enough to make them miss a lot either; he confirmed the song on the hardest difficulty and prepared himself by grabbing the back bar and practicing hitting the arrows with his feet. Yusei saw this and copied him, getting used to it just before the song started.

Obviously he won the practice round, but he'd been able to sneak a glance at Yusei's side before the song ended and noticed that he was hitting most of the notes at the end.

"I think I got it - let's do the real round now," Yusei said, poking at the arrows with his feet. From the way his eyes were narrowed, Judai could tell that he'd slipped into that focused mode of his that was usually reserved for dueling or work - that meant he was ready to get serious, and Judai felt a shrill of anticipation run through him. He couldn't lose this one, after all, or he would lose the entire bet, and he couldn't let that happen.

"This song good?"

Yusei nodded, turning to look at him for a moment. There was a fierce competitive look in his eyes that Judai quickly matched with his own before starting up the game. It was much harder than the last one, to the point where Judai didn't have a single moment to look over to see how Yusei was doing, but he felt pretty confident in his DDR skills.

"Dammit," Yusei muttered, glaring at the screen when the results popped up. Judai laughed in success, though he pat him on the pack in sympathy.

"It was damn close though, look at that score - we were nearly even!" he replied, ruffling his hair, "Now it's my turn to be winning again."

"That's what you said the last few times, too," Yusei said, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I've got a good feeling this time," Judai said, going up on his toes so he could pat him on the head lightly, "Come on, you get to pick the next game since I won this one."

Yusei gave him a deadpan look but started looking for the next game anyway, lacing his fingers through Judai's hands along the way. He still wasn't quite used to it, especially considering the feel of the leather gloves Yusei wore, but it was a nice feeling that made his heart flutter.

And then Judai won two more games in a row, and he cheered in happiness.

"Yes! I win, take that!" Judai exclaimed, wickedly grinning as he started thinking of what he could make Yusei do - maybe the thing he mentioned the previous day about cat ears? Or maybe make him do something else?

So many choices, but they were all good.

"...Have mercy, please," Yusei murmured, though he was smiling all the same. Judai hugged him tightly in his excitement before letting go just as quickly and grabbing his hand.

"We'll see about that," he teased, poking him lightly in the cheek with his free hand, "Now come on, we've been here for hours - I don't know about you but I'm starving again."

"What is with you and poking me today?" Yusei asked after humming his agreement to getting food.

"Dunno' but it's fun," Judai admitted, wicked grin still on his face from earlier, "The little squeak you made earlier was cute, by the way. Hmm, I wonder how ticklish you are then?"

He swore the way Yusei's face turned red would never, ever get old to him. As they rode back to the apartment, having decided to just make food back at home, Judai once again turned to poking at the poor man in delight.

 _Yubel, you have any good ideas for that bet? He's a lot like Haou, after all,_ Judai thought, getting a chuckle back in response from her and a feeling of annoyance from Haou.

 _"What's that supposed to mean?"_ Haou grumbled, eliciting a laugh from both of them.

 _"It means you and Yusei are a lot more alike in personality than you'd like to think,_ " Yubel replied, amusement coming through clearly in his mind, " _If I think of anything, Judai, I'll make sure to tell you. You should probably hold onto that bet for a couple days anyway._ "

Judai blinked in confusion, momentarily ceasing his pokes to Yusei, who un-tensed slightly in relief.

 _Eh? Why's that?_ Judai asked.

" _Dumbass, think about what day it'll be soon. What holiday's coming up?_ "

... _OH! Oh crap, I completely forgot! Wow, we really got together just in time, didn't we? Hey, stop laughing at me guys-_


	44. Wild Tag Duel Tournament Appeared!

**_2/13/19_**

Judai's phone buzzed in his hand early the next morning, an email alert popping up at the top of his screen. When he tapped it and read through the email, his eyes lit up in excitement.

"Yusei, tournament sign-ups just began in _Duel Dimensions_ \- it's a flash tag-duel tournament! It's later today, we have to do it!" Judai exclaimed, sitting up quickly from where he'd been lounging on the couch. Yusei looked over curiously next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders before looking at the email himself.

"A flash tournament? Are they going to get enough people for that?" Yusei questioned, reading through the requirements, "We should be good to duel since it's an 'anything goes' tournament, and skills are allowed. Should we use this as a test run for our new decks? We did finish them for the most part, we can just tune them slightly before the tournament."

"Hell yeah, we're going to destroy everyone!" Judai cheered, pointing at the last section of the email, "It says there's special Valentine's themed rewards just for participating, and that the winners will get a unique cosmetic item. I guess that's why it's a tag-duel tournament, they're hosting it because Valentine's Day is tomorrow... why hold it today then?"

Yusei hummed, giving Judai back the phone to so he could look at the rewards list - Judai knew he wasn't too interested in any of the cosmetic items, just the cards and the actual duels, so he let the taller man move him so he was being hugged from behind, the other's head digging into his shoulder and neck.

"Probably because a lot of people will be busy with other plans tomorrow," Yusei replied.

"True - speaking of which, should I be worried about anything tomorrow?"

Yusei snorted at that, "That's what I should be asking you. You're still sitting on that request from winning the bet, Judai."

Well, at least it meant Yusei knew him well - Judai was planning to use it tomorrow, after all, though to be honest it was killing him to save it for so long. Having so much time to think about what he could use it for was backfiring on him and truly testing his willpower to go through with his plan.

"Will it make you feel better if I say you'll like it too?" Judai asked, turning his head to give the man a cheeky grin.

"So you _are_ planning something," Yusei said, raising his eyebrows slightly with a smile before catching him in a kiss that Judai was quick to lean into, turning his phone off and putting it off to the side so he could turn his body around to face him.

A snicker from the top of the stairs broke them apart quickly, their faces flushing red as they snapped their heads up towards the noise.

"You guys really make this too easy," Crow teased, waving a camera around in the air. Judai however, face burning from embarrassment, was determined this time to save himself and Yusei from the teasing; he quickly sent a shadow to snatch the camera out of Crow's hands, causing the man to yell in surprise.

"What the hell?!" Crow sputtered, running down the stairs quickly after the camera which had been brought back to Judai. Judai felt rather proud of himself, a wicked grin spreading on his face, especially when Yusei re-wrapped himself around him to help him protect the camera from the incoming human missile.

"Quick, delete it," Yusei said, shoving a palm roughly into Crow's face when he tried to reach for it and holding him away. Within seconds Judai had found the picture and deleted, though he was slightly disappointed to see that they'd been the only pictures on the camera - clearly this was only a small victory, and not one that would win the war since they obviously would've made tons of backups of the other pictures.

"Tell you what Crow, if you and Jack decide to partner up for the tag-duel tournament in _Duel Dimensions_ today, I'll give you the camera back," Judai said, noticing that the ginger had stepped back and was staring at them in despair, mumbling something about the camera being expensive. The man perked up at this, though he was quick to narrow his eyes at them.

"What's the catch here?" he asked, glaring slightly in distrust.

"It's a Valentine's themed tournament," Judai replied chirpily.

Crow's eyebrow started twitching in annoyance, though clearly the camera won over in importance since he was soon running up the stairs and slamming the door open to Jack's room to yell at him to sign-up with him for the tournament. Judai, feeling very accomplished, was quick to turn back to Yusei, who was looking back in amusement.

"Now, back to what we were doing before we were so rudely interrupted."

"You know they still have phones, right?"

"...Shit, back to our room we go."

* * *

Crow and Jack didn't get too far in the tournament, as they kept bickering and, to be honest, simply didn't have the time or even enough hours played to synergize their decks and play-styles well. However, Crow at least wasn't too upset about the loss, considering he got his precious camera back. On the other hand, Jack had been grumpy most of the day, muttering about 'swirly-glasses' and his reputation; Judai felt like he was missing something there, but he wasn't about to bring it up so he supposed it would just get to stay a mystery.

Judai and Yusei did, however, win the tournament by a landslide like Judai'd predicted earlier - having skills be allowed let them absolutely destroy their opponents by the time both their second turns came to pass. The special skill _Shine Brightly With You_ that they'd earned from the hidden quest was even more broken of a skill than they'd initially thought, as they were able to lock down their opponents by bringing out a tuner and a non-tuner for free during their first turns, then immediately summoning Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon and Clear Wing Synchro Dragon after looping their hands a bit so they could get some extra special-summons and draws.

To be honest, Judai felt a little bad about their absolute domination in the tournament, but the crowd in the arena's stands was eating it up with gusto and their opponents seemed to take their defeats with grace, so overall he had a lot of fun with it. Also, the stadium itself was _huge_ \- Judai would have to ask Yusei later how big pro-league tournament venues were now and if they were this size because it was a bit overwhelming, though to be fair this was a video game world so they could take up as much space as they wanted.

Still, seeing their dragons fly around in the huge, magitech-filled stadium while being cheered on loudly by spectators was really cool.

Once they'd won, they were quick to run to the stadium's warp portal and teleport to one of the less-populated towns in the game - it didn't have a lot of people because it didn't have many quests, and of those quests they were all side-quests.

"So what did we get for winning? Did you say it was a cosmetic item?" Yusei asked, moving close to his side while letting Quillbolt down on the ground. Quillbolt and Winged Kuriboh, despite not being used in their tag-duel decks, were still there to play and had cheered on their partners during the tournament; at the moment though they'd spotted the marketplace for this town, so they were quick to leave so they could go see if there was anything interesting.

"Yeah, it's some sort of unique one, though we should have gotten it by n- oh hey, I got mail! That's probably it," Judai responded, tapping on the blinking envelope icon and taking the attachment from it, "Let's see... an arm equip? _Red Ribbon of Love_ , huh?"

"Oh, I see," Yusei said, equipping it before Judai could. A bright red bow appeared on his wrist, long strands of ribbon dangling down and just barely not touching the ground. "It's like the rings, where it has a special effect when another person wearing the item is within the effect range, but it can also be worn on its own."

Judai hummed, equipping it on himself so they could see how the couple effect worked - it ended up being that their wrists were connected by the ribbon strands that were originally hanging down, but the bows on their wrists stayed in place. He tried moving back and forth to see if it would pull Yusei with him, but the strands just elongated and shortened accordingly.

"Well, it's pretty cute at least," Judai grinned, lacing his fingers through Yusei's. Once he did so, little floating hearts faded into existence around them, mixing in with the sparkly aura from their rings.

"...I'm a little scared to look at the forums after this," Yusei stated, staring at the effects for a moment before sighing, "Then again, maybe this is a good thing. At this rate we won't have to deal with people bothering us with questions about our relationship status because it's so blatantly obvious we're together."

"Eh, I guess that's true, though I don't really care about what other people have to say about it - all I care about is you," Judai said, giving him a warm smile. He wished the game could simulate blushing faces through normal interaction at that moment, because the little smile Yusei gave him in return would surely have been accompanied by a bit of pink had this been in the real world.

"Same here, now come on - let's go eat something, we've been playing for over six hours straight now because we couldn't log out during the tournament," Yusei replied, letting go of him so he could find get to the log-out button, "I still can't believe they got so many sign-ups in such little time, this game is really popular..."

Judai chuckled at that, pulling the other over for a kiss once they'd both logged out and taken off their headsets.


	45. Valentine's Day

**_2/14/19_**

"So this is what you ran out to get last night after dinner..." Yusei said, blinking at the kitchen once Judai let him look in. Judai hummed, grinning across the table from him.

"Yup! I figured it was something we could do to celebrate the day, since I don't think either of us are too keen on going out and doing anything," Judai replied, patting the top of a bag of sugar. There were cocoa powder packs, more bags of sugar, extracts... not too much of each, obviously, since they weren't going to make _too much_ , but enough to make a variety of different types of chocolate.

"I like it - great thinking, Judai," Yusei smiled, touched that he'd been able to think of something simple they could do at home. Well, as simple as making chocolate is, though he wouldn't really know; he'd never baked or cooked so much in his life before Judai came. Judai gave him a bright smile in return, cheering for a moment at his success before dragging him over from the entryway.

"Alright, it's been a while since I made chocolate, but I pretty much remember the basics. Oh! What kind of chocolate do you prefer?" Judai asked.

Yusei had to stop and think about that for a moment, thinking back to the last few times he'd had chocolate. It honestly wasn't often that he ate the sweet, so he couldn't answer off the top of his head.

"Probably dark chocolate?" he answered questioningly.

"...Probably?"

"I don't have chocolate much."

Judai was giving him an exasperated look now, reaching up slightly on his toes so he could pat him on the head, "You poor soul. That just means we'll have to make a lot so you can figure out what your favorite is."

Before he could move away, Yusei leaned down and pulled him into a short kiss, laughing slightly afterwards, "You just want to know what it is so you can get more later, don't you?"

"Maybe," Judai admitted, giving him a cheeky grin, "Come on, let's get started - I wanna eat it already and we haven't even opened the packages yet."

They fell into what was now a familiar routine of Judai showing Yusei what to do before they worked in tandem to complete the steps with relative efficiency; Yusei liked it whenever they cooked as it was relaxing but also let them talk while having something to do. That, and they were always rewarded for their efforts at the end with food, so that was a plus.

Really now, Judai was absolutely spoiling him with his cooking skills. A little over a month later, he has no idea how he ever survived on just instant ramen and cheap coffee for so long.

"So how do you want to this?" Judai asked, holding up the different extracts.

"Put them in different moulds, we can just label them so we don't forget," Yusei replied, looking down at the numerous moulds Judai had bought. He found it rather amusing that he'd grabbed only a single heart-shape filled mould out of the five that he'd bought, the others being random other shapes like stars.

"Sounds good to me," Judai said, getting to work on mixing in the first flavor, mint. Eventually every mould was filled and they were left with about half a bowl of chocolate left.

"We could just pour it into a pan," Yusei suggested, thinking of the numerous rectangular pans Judai had bought when he 'fixed' their kitchen. Glancing over at Judai, he spotted the man sporting a look that instantly made him wary of what he was planning.

"Or," Judai hummed, scooping up chocolate straight from the bowl with his finger and turning to look at Yusei with a wicked glint in his eye, "I can cash in on that bet now."

"Now?" Yusei asked, warily looking between Judai's hand and face. Before he knew it, however, he was seated on top of the table with the bowl of chocolate placed next to him, Judai leaning in between his legs so he could lean close to his face. He felt his face warm in response - this time the subtle reminder that Judai was much stronger than he looked made his heart do flips in his chest.

"You have to do whatever I say 'til the bowl of chocolate's gone," Judai murmured lowly, eyes practically smoldering in their intensity, "Got it? And remember this - you're lucky you're cute and asked for mercy earlier, or I'd have made this a lot more embarrassing for you."

Yusei didn't get to answer past a quick nod of his head before Judai was kissing him, tongue swiping eagerly across his lips and asking for entrance. He quickly granted it, startling slightly at the chocolate taste that quickly reached his tongue, but enjoying it nonetheless; his arms were soon wrapped around Judai's waist, pulling him deeper into the kiss.

And then he felt fingers brush chocolate across his cheek as Judai pulled back, causing him to pout indignantly while the other just chuckled darkly and leaned in to lick it off his cheek.

"Your face is so red," Judai said gleefully, and Yusei could feel his face flush even more as a result, "So you like the chocolate, I'm assuming?"

"...Shut up and kiss me again."


	46. More Friends On The Way

**_2/15/19_**

"Yusei, your phone's ringing," Judai said, shaking him slightly so he'd look up from where we was working on his laptop. He gave him a smile in thanks, pecking him on the cheek before looking down to see who was calling him and subsequently picking up.

Evidently, whoever it was that was calling, Yusei knew them - the first thing that Judai heard was a very loud yell of 'YUSEI!' through the phone. He snorted at that, giving Yusei a grin before going back to his notebook of scribbles. It was something he found helped a lot when he was trying to get his thoughts in order, and in this case let him go back through things he'd already thought up in regards to the psychic duelist issue they'd discussed earlier.

It was _really weird_ that there were apparently so little people that could see spirits, especially in comparison to the amount of people that could materialize duel monsters in this world. The ratio was completely backwards at this moment in time and it was mildly alarming. Looking at his list, he read over the little notes and bullet points while crossing off things that didn't make sense... which was most of them.

His research into the matter was limited to whatever he could scrounge up from the internet so far, which wasn't much, so in order to go further he'd either need to find someone to talk to about it or take a trip into the spirit world and figure if one of the spirit dimensions had anything strange happening. Honestly, though, that was one of the last things he wanted to do and he'd save it as a last resort - those trips were always long, tiring, and just an overall pain unless you wanted to stay there for a long time in the first place.

In the meantime though, he'd just have to stay on the lookout for any weird magical signatures in the city. So long as it wasn't anything too serious, it'd be fine, but he'd know the second something like the Light of Destruction or Darkness appeared if he kept his powers spread out at least.

A poke to his cheek brought him out of his thoughts.

"Mind if some people come over? They're the kids that are also part of our signer group," Yusei asked, giving him a questioning look.

"Sure, I don't mind at all," Judai replied, giving him a small smile, "I do still need to meet everyone, like you said before."

With that Yusei turned back to the phone, chuckling at the enthusiastic shout that echoed out from the phone. Judai was able to vaguely make out a 'See you soon!' and some squabbling before the phone went dead.

"Lua's enthusiastic," Yusei explained, "His sister, Luka, is much calmer than him, but they're really close and have a strong bond." He seemed to stop in thought for a second before his eyes lit up in remembrance, "Oh yeah, she's also the one I was telling you about before that could see spirits."

Judai blinked at that, letting out a hum before leaning back in his chair and giving his notebook another glance in thought.

"What've you been working so hard on over here, anyway?" Yusei asked curiously. Judai saw his gaze on the book and gestured that it was alright for him to look at the pages filled with messy scribbles.

"I've been trying to figure out the psychic duelist thing we talked about a few days ago," Judai said, "It's all mostly just dumb ideas since I need more information if I want to get to the bottom of this, and for all I know its just how the world decided to progress. However, it's definitely worth looking into just in case the cause is something more serious."

"You could always ask Luka a couple questions, and her spirits for that matter - they meet quite often in the spirit realm from what I hear."

Judai choked at that, looking at him in shock.

"She can travel to the spirit realm?!"

"...I probably should've mentioned that, huh?"

"No duh, that's important information! If she can travel to the spirit realm and come back intact that means she has even more reason to be able to materialize spirits, this just makes everything even weirder!" Judai exclaimed, pulling Yusei close in a headlock and giving him a playful noogie, "Dummy, do I need to oil those gears in your head? Do you need more sleep?!"

"Hey- give me a break, it just didn't occur to me at the time!"

"Yeah, yeah, sure it didn't," Judai teased, letting him go from the headlock. Yusei sighed, giving him a cute glare while trying to fix his hair back so it wasn't a mess.

And then he found himself being pulled into the taller man's lap and he felt himself flush red at the little squeak he made in surprise.

"We need to get this out of our system in the next thirty minutes before they get here," Yusei stated, breathing into his ear softly, "So why don't we go get comfortable for that?"

Oh, was this how Yusei felt on Valentine's Day? Because the way his heart was pounding from this was totally unfair.


	47. Meeting The Twins

**_2/16/19_**

"Yusei!"

Judai looked on in amusement as Yusei was subsequently tackled by a green blur flying through the door, though he managed to catch the kid and keep his balance. Another green-haired kid poked their head around the corner, looking rather sheepish at how their sibling was acting.

"S-Sorry Yusei, he's just excited because it's been a while since we last came over," they explained, coming in and closing the door behind them. She must've been Luka, then, from how calm she was compared to her sibling who was still practically vibrating in place from excitement.

"It's fine," Yusei said, smiling at their antics, "Anyways, there's someone you should come meet." He gestured for Judai to come over, which he did so with a friendly grin.

"Yo! I'm Judai, nice to meet'cha!" he stated, sending them a wink and a finger salute.

"I'm Lua, and this is my sister, Luka!" Lua exclaimed, quickly moving in front of him so he could get a better look and humming in thought, "Huh, you look kinda familiar actually- are you a duelist? Duel me!"

Before Judai could answer, the boy's sister cut in with a reprimanding look, "Lua, you can't just ask him so suddenly, you just met him!" She turned to him before continuing, "Sorry, he means well. I'm Luka, it's nice to meet you as well."

"Ah, don't worry, I am a duelist after all - I like your spirit, Lua!" Judai said, ruffling Lua's hair for a moment before quickly dodging a pouty swipe from the boy, "I'll duel you if you want later, but for now, didn't you guys come over for a reason?"

Seeing Lua go from sad, to elated, to deflating once again in defeat was hilarious. Judai sometimes forgot just how amusing kids could be, but this was a clear reminder of it.

 _"Tell me about it, you weren't much better when you were a kid,_ " Yubel chuckled, amusement ringing throughout the back of his mind. He sent annoyance back towards her, though even he had to admit that he was just as excitable as a child.

"Yeah, we needed to work on a project and it required some technical work... luckily we're expected to get help from people who actually know what they're doing, so this works out well," Luka explained, glancing over at Yusei.

"Well, we should probably get started on it. You guys want anything? Water, tea?" Yusei asked, motioning for them to bring their stuff over to the desk in the corner of the room.

The twins paused, blinking at each other before looking over at him curiously, "You mean you guys actually have something other than water and coffee? Since when did you have tea? Did you guys finally start eating properly too?"

Judai snickered at Yusei's suddenly blank look since he could clearly see the embarrassment in his eyes from the fact that even kids were questioning his previous diet of coffee and instant ramen.

"You can thank me for that," Judai laughed, bringing their attention over to him, "I personally went through that kitchen and threw out all the instant ramen. At this point that kitchen's a point of pride for me, just go look at how well-kept it looks now." With that, the kids ran over to the kitchen entrance, staring agape at how clean the counters were and marvelling at how it actually looked... well, used for anything besides ramen storage and cheap coffee brewing.

"Holy- It's like a completely different kitchen!" Lua yelled, opening up a cabinet to look inside.

"There's actually plates and pans and different kinds of cups other than mugs..." Luka stated in surprise, looking over at Judai in question, "You said you threw out the instant ramen? Does that mean they really _do_ eat actual food now?"

At this point Yusei was covering his face with his hands, though Judai was pretty sure he was internally laughing at the situation despite his initial embarrassment; he'd most likely accepted his fate by now that the state of the kitchen pre-Judai would forever be remembered and laughed at.

"Yeah, mostly because I'm the one who cooks the food. Yusei's getting pretty good at it though, now that he finally has someone forcing him to learn," Judai replied, slinging an arm around Yusei's shoulders as best as he could. It didn't work too well considering the height difference, but it didn't stop him from secretly trailing a finger down the back of his neck to tease him; Yusei glared at him from behind his hands, eye twitching slightly. "Well, enough of that, I'll just pull out a variety of stuff for you guys and you can pick from it, okay? Go get started on your project - and remember Lua, the sooner you finish, the sooner you get that duel you wanted."

That certainly pumped Lua up, the boy cheering as he dashed back over to the desk with his sister following behind him. Yusei followed shortly after, but not without giving Judai a short warning look that was ruined by the fading red on his cheeks.

With a hop in his step from how cute Yusei was, Judai went and started gathering drinks.


	48. Another Kuriboh

**_2/17/19_**

Judai paused when he came out of the kitchen, drinks in hand. There was a spirit he hadn't seen before shyly hiding behind the plushies that were still sitting on the couch, looking as if it was trying to blend in.

...Was it a Kuriboh of some sort? It had to be one of the twins' at the very least. He put the drinks down near the three at the desk in the corner, still staring at the couch where the duel spirit had its eyes closed and its tail wrapped around itself.

"Uh... do either of you have a Kuriboh card of some sort?" Judai asked, mentally calling out to Winged Kuriboh that there was a new friend for him to meet.

"I-I have a Kuribon," Luka replied, blinking at him in confusion, "Why?"

"Kuribon, huh? Yeah, definitely a Kuriboh," he hummed, noting that the spirit had paused and opened its eyes when they heard their name. He approached the couch slowly, seeing that the spirit was a bit skittish - hopefully once Winged Kuriboh got here they'd be a bit more relaxed. "Hey there, there's no need to hide little guy-"

"W-Wait! You can see Kuribon?!" Luka exclaimed, turning quickly in her chair to face him in surprise. Lua blinked at that, giving him a surprised look as well - he may not be able to see them, but he definitely knew it was supposed to be a rare ability.

Judai gave her a cheerful grin in response, "Yup! I've actually got a Kuriboh partner as well!" Winged Kuriboh chose that moment to pop up next to him with a happy greeting, questioning what he'd meant by a new friend. He was quick to point the fluff ball to the couch, where the other duel spirit had slowly started inching out from their hiding place.

"Be nice, Winged Kuriboh, they're kind-of shy," he said, waving him off so he could work his magic. Sure enough, a minute later Kuribon had happily hopped out from behind the plushies, floating and playing around with Winged Kuriboh; it had to be a Kuriboh thing to be able to get along so well immediately.

"Winged Kuriboh gets along with everyone, doesn't he?" Yusei chimed in, smiling at the playing spirits. This, of course, prompted the already shocked Luka and Lua to turn and gape at him in further surprise.

"Y-Yusei?! Since when could you see spirits?!" They shouted, practically knocking their chairs over as they stood up to surround him. Yusei blinked in confusion for a moment before his eyes lit up in remembrance.

"Oh, right, it's been a month or so since I've been able to see them," he replied, "I guess I've just gotten so used to it that I forgot no one else knew."

Judai snorted at that, chipping in with his own two-cents, "No, it's just that Junk Synchron and Winged Kuriboh make such a ruckus playing most days that you got used to tuning them out. Speaking of which, you should probably call him out - he'll probably be ecstatic to finally meet a new friend."

Moments later, the orange duel spirit popped out with a cheer, scarf flowing freely around him as he joined the other two spirits immediately.

"Wha- how do you just forget to mention something like that?!" Luka continued, pouting at Yusei in annoyance before turning to look at Judai in awe, "I've never met someone else that was able to see duel spirits before! Have you always been able to see them?"

"Yeah, pretty much - I know a bunch of other people that can see them, too," Judai replied, moving back over to them so he could flop down in one of the desk chairs and pop open a can of soda, "I helped Yusei fix a little... problem he had that was stopping him from seeing them when he should've been able to, so he can see them now."

Judai glanced at the excited twins in front of him, wondering if he should wait or not... yeah, he probably should. They should at least strive to do well in school unlike he did.

"Tell you what, I'll show you something cool I can do when you guys finish your project. I promise it'll be worth it!~"

Both twins pouted, clearly wanting to hound him for more answers to their numerous questions, but the speed that they went back to getting their project laid out showed their excitement regardless. Yusei gave him a grateful smile for getting them back on track, and really, that was all the motivation he needed to keep being a decent role model to the kids instead of a rule-breaking one.


	49. Fluffy Kuribohs

**_2/18/19_**

Seeing as they wouldn't be done for at least an hour, Judai took it upon himself to pass the time by cooking up lunch. Boiling the water to make pasta would take most of the time at least, so it was easy while not taking too short a time to prepare.

Sure enough, by the time it was all ready, multiple choices of sauces available, they'd finished their project. Judai still wasn't sure what it was, but they had... some sort of little tech gadget on the table and a bunch of filled out worksheets, so they'd clearly gotten it done.

Homework and technical stuff like that wasn't really his forte.

"I made pasta for lunch, come get what you want!" he yelled out from the kitchen, pulling down bowls from the cabinets. The twins cheered and were quick to assemble their food how they liked and dig in. Yusei gave him another grateful smile, which made him significantly happier once again.

"Thanks for the food!" Lua said, barely pausing before going back to eating. Luka echoed his statement, though she did it much more calmly and most importantly, before shoving food into her mouth.

Once everyone was done and the dishes were piled up in the sink, Judai gathered everyone around the couch, chairs pulled up as needed. He made sure to grab his duel disk before he sat down, turning it on into standby mode. The duel spirits in the room hovered around them in curiosity, though only Winged Kuriboh seemed to realize what he was doing as he came to float by his shoulder.

"Alright, I promised to show you guys something cool when you finished," Judai said, pulling out Winged Kuriboh's card from his deck and placing it on the disk, channeling a bit of his power with practiced ease, "So, here we go - meet my partner, Winged Kuriboh."

With that, Winged Kuriboh materialized in the room, fluffy fur and wings as real as can be. The twins shouted in excitement, giggling when Winged Kuriboh floated over to them and landed on Lua's head.

"So you _can_ materialize them," Luka said, reaching over and petting Winged Kuriboh, who cried happily, "I was getting kind-of curious if you could, to be honest." Winged Kuriboh let his paws fall over Lua's eyes playfully, causing the boy to stumble around in confusion while laughing.

"This is so cool! He's like- like you and Aki combined, sis!"

Judai didn't know who Aki was, but apparently they could materialize monsters; probably something to ask Yusei about later, as they were probably a part of what he'd meant earlier by knowing more people who could materialize spirits than see them.

"It's pretty cool, isn't it? Normally it takes a lot of energy to keep them here, especially for the higher level monsters, but the duel disk helps out a lot with energy management," he added, leaving out the extra bit about how his powers over the Gentle Darkness meant he could hold Winged Kuriboh here with no problem without the duel disk. From the knowing look Yusei was giving him though, the taller duelist had figured out the information he was withholding.

"C-Could you summon Kuribon too?" Luka asked.

Judai grinned and nodded, and soon enough the girl was shyly holding out the duel spirit's card to him. He made sure to take it carefully before putting it onto the disk as well, causing Kuribon to pop into existence with their ribbon floating around them. Kuribon plopped themselves down on Luka's head just like Winged Kuriboh had onto Lua's, exchanging happy cries with the other duel monster and bopping the girl underneath them with their tail lightly.

Judai glanced over at Yusei, giving him a knowing smile and motioning for him to come closer. With a slightly sheepish look, he did so and held out Junk Synchron's card to him, the duel spirit tackling Yusei over in excitement with his scarf trailing behind him the second Judai put his card on the disk. He couldn't hold back a laugh at the slight huff Yusei gave from being slammed in the gut before giving the excitable orange duel monster a fond smile.

"Lua, you got anyone you want materialized?" he asked, not wanting the boy to be left out. Sure enough, the boy pulled a card out of his deck and gave it to him, Winged Kuriboh being kind enough to move his paws so he could see and do so.

'Morphtronic Magnen', huh? That's an archetype he'd never heard of before, it would be interesting to duel against the boy and see what it does.

Once Magnen was summoned, Winged Kuriboh floated back over to Judai and flopped over in his lap, giving room for the duel monster to interact with their partner. Lua was utterly ecstatic at finally being able to talk with one of his own cards, and the two hit it off immediately, though it seemed like Magnen had the same circumstance as the Kuribohs did where only their partners and other duel monsters could understand what they were actually saying; Junk Synchron could because he was more humanoid in shape, and underneath the scarf he actually had a hidden 'mouth' built in.

Yusei joined him on the couch shortly with Junk Synchron chattering away, and together they watched the twins play with their partners.


	50. Duel With Lua

**_2/19/19_**

It took the better part of an hour, but eventually Lua remembered that he'd wanted a duel with Judai and challenged him. Seeing as Judai was currently using his duel disk to keep their duel monsters there, they agreed to just leave out their partners for the match and just have a casual table-top duel on top of the coffee table.

Lua's Morphtronics were an interesting archetype to say the least; Judai hadn't ever encountered an archetype whose entire gimmick revolved around whether each monster was in attack or defense position, so it took him a few moments of thinking to make any moves because he had to remember what each monster's effect was in the moment. Unfortunately for Lua, however, the second he pulled out his ace, Power Tool Dragon, he was quickly defeated.

"That's a pretty cool card," Judai admitted, giving him a grin before placing a card down on the table, "Unfortunately, all those equip cards you just got are getting destroyed, because I play Heavy Storm."

"Awwww! That cards sucks- well, it doesn't suck, but it sucks for me at least..." Lua groaned, moving his entire back row to the graveyard. From the looks of it, Judai had taken out a Mirror Force as well, which was really good for him because that meant he'd basically assured his win.

"And now I play Polymerization to fuse Elemental HERO Avian and Burstinatrix to summon Elemental HERO Wingman! Then I play the field spell Skyscraper, which gives Elemental HERO's a bonus 1000 attack points whenever they attack a monster with more attack points than them."

Lua was quick to pick up on what was about to happen, staring wide-eyed at the spell card, "Aw man, now that's one heck of an effect."

"And because Wingman has less attack points than Power Tool Dragon, he gains 1000 attack points, boosting him up to 3100 attack points. Then his effect activates, dealing damage to you equal to the amount of your destroyed monster... which is more than the amount of life points you have left," Judai continued, before giving him his signature wink and salute, "Gotcha'! Nice duelin', Lua!"

"You too! Darn, you're really strong, aren't you?" Lua replied, getting over the loss quickly and instead focusing on Judai while he gathered up his cards, "Are you a pro or something?"

"Well, I'm working up to it at least. I'm not quite at pro leagues yet-"

Yusei interrupted with a confused look, "Did you not check your records at all since the tournament a week ago? Your rank went up a lot..."

Judai stared blankly at him before scrambling for his phone and opening up the ranking site. Everyone gathered around him curiously on the couch, watching the page load after he searched for his name on the website.

 _Judai Yuki_ _: 2 Tournaments on Record_

 _Wins/Losses: 23 wins/0 losses_

 _Tournaments Won: 2_

 _Rank: 1672 (Tier 5 Pro)_

 _(NOTE: Rank is determined not only by win/loss ratios but also by officials who have observed their matches. Duelists may be moved up in rank if it is determined that they are at a higher level than the tournaments they have participated in.)_

"They already bumped me up to the Pro League?!"

"That's- That's really impressive, Judai," Luka said, Kuribon purring in agreement from her arms, "You've only dueled in two tournaments but you've already been ranked that high. That and you've got a perfect win streak..."

"I don't feel bad at all about losing now! You're amazing!" Lua exclaimed, stars practically forming in his eyes as he gasped in thought, "Are there any videos of your matches? I wanna see! I wanna see!"

Yusei quickly brought out the holo-pad tablet he'd swiped off the desk earlier, not letting Judai say much before a video of his first finals match was suddenly playing on the screen for the twins to watch. Judai pouted at him, but only got a mischievous grin in return.

Oh, he'd _so_ be getting his revenge once the kids were gone.

"There's so many monsters out against you, how in the world did you get past that?" Lua asked, completely enthralled with the duel playing out in front of him, "Just playing Winged Kuriboh? Wait but the face down- WOAH, SO COOL! Winged Kuriboh LV 10?! That's such a cool card! Oh man, an OTK!" Next to him, Luka was just as excited, though unlike her brother she merely expressed it by watching intently; Kuribon seemed to be doing the cheering for her though, chirping happily when Winged Kuriboh and his LV 10 form made their appearance.

"Did you search this beforehand? How did you even know this was posted?" Judai asked, turning to Yusei questioningly.

"That tournament is actually really popular and is frequently used to figure out who to watch for the rest of the year in the lower leagues," he replied with a smile, "This video has a lot of views, you know."

Judai wasn't sure he wanted to know the exact number of views it had, if it was as popular as Yusei was suggesting it was. Man, all he'd been worried about at the time was getting some sort of money stash so he could help out Yusei with his awful kitchen and eating habits, which also let him feel less like a free-loader.

"Is there a video of the other tournament's finals?" Luka asked, bringing their attention back to the twins.

"It wasn't broadcast, but considering the crowd and our... popularity spike at the time, there's probably a video of it somewhere taken by a fan," Yusei replied, "Try searching for 'The Supreme Hero', but all one word and with 'hero' in all caps. It'd probably be labelled with that somehow."

"'The Supreme Hero wins tournament IRL', does that sound right? Is the thumbnail accurate?"

Judai and Yusei peered over, and sure enough, that was Judai with Yubel out on the field at the correct tournament grounds. They nodded their heads, humming in confirmation and watching alongside the twins once Lua pressed play.

"That's a sick dragon, they look so bad-ass!"

"Brother! Language!"

"Sorry sis- but you have to agree, right?! All of that card's forms look so cool! Yubel, was it?"

"Well, I thought she looked pretty with that first form, and then turned really cool with all the forms afterwards."

Judai couldn't help the smile the grew on his face from hearing them talk about Yubel, and he felt her embarrassed glee in the back of his mind before she could smother it with pride instead.

Once the video was over, Yusei put the tablet away and much to the twins chagrin, announced that it was getting late and that he'd take them home. Judai was quick to hop on board once it was established that they'd be walking, seeing as Yusei could only safely take one twin on his bike, and cheerfully bantered with Lua and talked about duel spirits with Luka on the way to their apartment.

He says apartment, but really, this was more like a full-blown house. Clearly these kids had rich parents, which... weren't around.

It was just the twins there, and that _grated his nerves._ No wonder these kids had been able to run around saving the world without too much issue in regards to their age, they lived by themselves with hardly any adult supervision. At least they had the rest of the Signers now to rely on, and from Yusei had said they now knew people in the police force and government due to their status as Signers, but his point stood regardless.

"Lua, Luka - if you ever want to hang out, feel free to call anytime," he said once they got to the apartment gate, letting Haou get annoyed in his mind for him for a bit so that he could keep on his happy-go-lucky smile, "I'd be happy to duel or talk about spirits and stuff. Oh yeah! Luka, Yusei mentioned something about you travelling to the spirit realm - we _have_ to talk about that one, that's a really, really rare ability to have, but I'd rather talk about that when there's an entire day to blow, y'know?"

"O-Okay! I'm guessing you know some stuff about the spirit realm, then?" Luka asked, blinking in surprise at him but happy nonetheless.

"You could say that," Judai grinned, giving her a playful wink and finger guns that both twins laughed at. They waved goodbye, watching the twins disappear into the building before turning away and heading back home.

Judai also let his smile melt down into a twitching frown, something Yusei was quick to note and question him on.

"What's up? I noticed you got really antsy about something back there once we got to their apartment building," he asked, lacing his fingers through his in a comforting gesture.

Judai sighed, squeezing his hand in thanks before leaning into his side while they walked, "They live there _alone._ I know from personal experience that living a childhood like that sucks absolute balls, and I just get irritated whenever I see it happen."

Yusei hummed, unfolding their hands for a moment so he could link their arms together instead so they were closer, "If it makes you feel any better, apparently their parents got in contact with them recently - it'll be a few months, but they want the twins to come live with them. The problem is the twins aren't sure they want to leave since their parents live in another city, so the decision's up to them right now."

"Well, at least they're letting them choose for themselves," Judai replied, slowly relaxing the longer he was attached to Yusei, "For now though, I'm giving them the option to hang out whenever they want. Besides, like I said earlier, I really do need to talk with Luka about the spirit realm."

"You've really got a soft spot for kids, huh?"

"So do you, mister 'cool and collected older brother'. Oh man, your face when they commented about the kitchen was hilario-mph!"

Judai was interrupted by lips pressing quickly into his, his face turning pink as he instinctively closed his eyes and whined slightly when Yusei pulled away only moments later. He quickly re-opened his eyes and glared playfully at him, though Yusei merely tugged him along to get him walking again with a small victorious grin on his face.

"Come on, when we get back I promise you can have all the kisses you want," Yusei teased.

Judai pouted and looked away in embarrassment, though he tightened his grip on Yusei's hand regardless.


	51. Clothing

**_2/20/19_**

Yusei wasn't surprised at all when Judai tugged him up to their room the second they got home, practically pouncing on him the second they got the door closed.

"Making me wait to kiss you, how mean," Judai pouted, pulling him down for a long kiss. He obliged, slowly moving backwards until he could sit on the bed and pull Judai down on top of him so that he didn't have to lean so much - his back greatly appreciated it, at least. Judai barely let him take a breath when they eventually broke apart before pulling him back in for another, pushing him down gently so they were lying down instead.

"Your hair tickles," Yusei chuckled a few minutes later, reaching up with both hands and putting the other's hair behind his ears as best he could; it didn't really want to stay, but at least it wasn't in the way of their mouths anymore. The last thing he wanted was a mouth full of hair.

"Yeah, well, your knee pads like to dig into me," Judai retaliated, sitting back up suddenly and hitting said knee pads to prove his point, "You weren't even riding your bike today, why are you wearing these?"

"It was just in case I needed to run out and go get anything for the twins," Yusei explained, scooting back a bit from under Judai so he could sit up as well, "At least I'm not wearing my usual jacket? That thing has protection all over it."

Judai grumbled at that, giving him a cute pout, "Yeah, in all the places that I like to rest my head. Why are there shoulder pads?"

"To protect my shoulders, obviously."

He got a light bop to the head for that one.

"Ha ha, very funny," Judai said, though Yusei could see his lips trying to twitch into a smile, "You're just glad that the jacket you gave me is fluffy as hell, aren't you?" The brown-haired male tugged at said jacket, playing with the fluff in the hood while giving Yusei a knowing look.

"Maybe. Though, it is _my_ jacket - I just like to see you wearing my clothes," he teased, wrapping his arms around his waist so he could pull him closer and peck him on the cheek. He was rewarded with the sight of a slightly flustered Judai, trying to look away from him in embarrassment.

"That's not fair at all, I don't get to see you in mine because you're too tall to wear them," Judai complained, bringing his hands up to grip at Yusei's arms so he stayed balanced.

Yusei hummed, thinking about the time that he gave him his clothes before laughing a bit, "I nearly gave myself a heart attack when I gave you it, y'know. I hadn't thought about it beyond the fact that you needed warm clothing, then you walked out and suddenly I realized that _you were wearing my clothes_."

Judai laughed at that, a bright grin making its way back onto his face once again as he suddenly pulled Yusei into a tight bear hug and rolled them onto their sides, "That's just like you, how did I not notice at the time? Aw, now I wanna see you in my jacket even more - why must you be so tall? Then again, I like how tall you are so I guess I can't complain too much."

Yusei got a glimpse of a mischievous glint in his eyes before he was pulled into another long kiss, eyes closing immediately as he felt Judai eagerly lick his lips for entrance. He lost the little war they subsequently had, Judai moving so he was on top of him once again and grabbing his hands.

He looked on in confusion as Judai moved back suddenly, though he was already wary due to the foxy look that had made its way back onto the shorter male's face. He soon figured out what he was planning though when Judai took his hands and brought them up, using them to pull his jacket just off his shoulders; Yusei felt his face warm at the sight, cursing the fact that he knew he was staring with wide eyes but couldn't look away in the slightest.

"Yusei..." Judai breathed, looking him right in the eyes. He momentarily let the foxy smirk he'd been sporting fall away, replacing it with half-lidded eyes and just-ever-so-slightly parted lips.

Yusei was going to die early, and it was all going to be Judai's fault for being such a tease.


	52. Morning Meeting

**_2/21/19_**

"Mornin' guys!" Crow cheered, joining the three where they were sitting in the kitchen. Jack and Yusei were nursing their second cups of coffee at this point while Judai was slowly waking up with a warm mug of tea.

"G'mornin'..." Judai mumbled back, sipping at his tea and letting it burn his tongue slightly so he'd come back to the land of the living a bit faster; it's not like he really had to worry about lasting burns anyway considering his healing factor.

Across the table, Jack looked up from his phone and gave Crow a nod before turning to give Judai a raised eyebrow, "How are you still not awake? You've been down here for nearly an hour now."

Judai merely gave him a mild glare, not deigning to give him a response otherwise. Crow and Yusei laughed slightly at this, which caused him to hide behind his mug as best as he could at the moment.

"Everyone has slow days," Crow shrugged, moving to go get a cup of coffee for himself, "By the way, Akiza's coming over today in case you guys forgot."

Judai perked up slightly at the name, recognizing it as the name of the last signer he had yet to meet, "That's the person who can materialize duel monsters, right?"

"Oh, so now you're awake?" Yusei teased, giving him a small smile before responding, "Yeah, that's her. Just don't hound her too much with your questions, okay?"

"I'm not _that_ bad - I mean, I didn't 'hound' Luka with questions, did I?"

"True, but Luka also isn't dealing with graduation exams and med-school applications at the moment," Crow piped up, pulling out a chair next to Jack and flopping down into it once he'd put down his drink.

Judai cringed at that, instantly feeling sympathetic for the girl; school was already bad enough with all its written tests as is, but combined with college applications, and for medical schools at that?

Well, his respect for her just shot through the roof to say the least. Like he'd said earlier, school and stuff was _not_ his forte.

"I'll keep it to a minimum," he said, "I'm guessing she's here to hang out then?"

"For the most part, but I remember her saying something about her professor assigning a project," Yusei answered.

"Oh yeah! She was kind-of grumbling about it at the time, that's why I remember - it was hilarious," Crow blinked, chuckling into his cup, "It was something along the lines of 'Goddamn Professor Tenjoin assigning last-minute projects all the time and-"

Judai choked on his drink, interrupting him, "Wait wait wait, what did you just say?"

Three sets of eyes were staring at him now questioningly, and Crow slowly trailed, "It was something along the lines of 'Goddamn Professor Tenjoin assigning last-minute projects'...?"

"Oh gods," Judai stated, whipping out his phone and quickly searching for the Duel Academy staff list while the others looked at him like he was going crazy.

Sure enough, right there on the first page was a picture of an older Asuka Tenjoin, listed as the 'Head of the Strategy Department and History Department'.

"Holy shit, Asuka actually became a teacher! Good for her, but _really bad for me-_ "

"Woah woah woah, wait, you know her professor?!" Crow interrupted his ramblings, leaning over to look at the page he'd pulled up with a grin.

"...Why is that bad for you?" Jack questioned, staring him down with an intense look in his eyes.

Oh, right - now that he thought about it, Judai'd never explained exactly who he was to them, had he? Yusei had told him that he'd let him explain when he was ready, because at the time he'd still been adjusting, but he'd been living with them for nearly two months at this point; he really should've explained who he was by now. Hell, the only reason they'd probably let it slide for so long was because of Yusei vouching for him, and subsequently dating him.

Judai glanced at Yusei, who gave him a smile and nod in encouragement, before taking a deep breath and just stating bluntly, "I time-hopped nearly twenty years to get here, and she's going to kill me if she learns I'm here."

Oh gods above, Asuka was _not_ his first pick on his list of friends to be the first one to learn he was here, at this particular point in time. She was right down at the bottom next to Jun while Johan and Sho stood straight at the top of the list. He should... he should probably search them all up at this point to be honest, and be prepared to explain himself.

" _I'll be honest, I'm surprised no one's tried to contact you yet with how you've been shaking the junior leagues and jumping straight to pro,_ " Yubel said, Haou humming in agreement, " _You haven't exactly been hiding, quite the opposite in fact._ "

Judai stopped at that, thinking for a moment about it before Haou seemed to catch on to his stray thought.

 _"Hiding in plain sight_ ," Haou stated.

Damn, Yusei'd _really_ pulled through on that one with the system update and ID, hadn't he? He'd have to thank him again later. With kisses.

"Makes sense," Jack said, eyes narrowing in thought, "It definitely explains the old cards and fusion summons. But why?"

"No kidding, that's what I want to know. You left everything behind?" Crow asked, staring at him with raised eyebrows. Yusei joined in, giving him a silent look that Judai couldn't quite read.

"It's... complicated," Judai slowly said, looking down at his phone and at Asuka's picture before moving his gaze to the wall, "Yugi was the one who suggested it to me initially, but I'm the one that took to it-"

"You don't have to explain," Yusei cut in, his face softening in quiet understanding the moment he'd brought up Yugi's name. Crow and Jack caught on that this was something beyond them at the moment, with Crow easily moving away from the topic and instead bringing up what they could do once Akiza came over in a couple hours.

Later, once they'd all split up to finish getting ready for the day, Judai caught Yusei in a hug on their bed, burying his head in his chest.

"Is this about earlier?" Yusei questioned, placing a kiss on the top of his head, "Like I said, you don't have to explain."

Judai stayed quiet for a bit, enjoying the warmth before speaking, "I want to explain though, at least to you. You've actually met Yugi before, so you know that if he suggests something huge like that then it's..."

"It's probably for good reason," he finished, "He really didn't seem the type to interfere with others' life decisions much."

"Yeah," Judai sighed, lacing his fingers with Yusei's before continuing in a whisper, "He never actually told me the reason, but based off how he was acting... he kept looking at my hand, specifically my pinky finger, whenever he brought it up."

He felt Yusei's hair brush the top of his head as he tilted his head in confusion, then felt when he stiffened in realization.

"Oh," Yusei whispered, hands gripping his tighter suddenly. He's sure that if he were to look up, he'd see Yusei staring wide-eyed at their interlocked fingers.

Because Judai, after much debate with the two sharing his soul, was ninety-nine percent sure that Yugi could see red strings of fate, and directed him accordingly.

They didn't move from that spot on the bed until they absolutely had to, simply enjoying the feel of being together.


	53. Meeting Akiza

**_2/22/19_**

"Hey! Long time no see!" Crow greeted, opening the door the second he'd heard a knock. Judai looked up at that, watching as the newcomer stepped in with a tired, but clearly happy smile.

"Hey, sorry I haven't been around much," she replied, dropping a rather large messenger bag off on the entryway's side table; from the sigh of relief she gave, it must've been pretty heavy. It probably held a laptop or something of the sort - Judai had lugged one around for years and sometimes its weight was really annoying to deal with, though it was definitely worth it to be able to check in with people whenever he got a connection.

"Don't worry about it, we know you've been busy," Crow said, waving her over towards Judai and Yusei who were sitting on the couch, "Anyways, we've got someone for you to meet!"

Taking his cue, Judai stood up and met her halfway, holding out his hand to shake with a grin, "Hey, the name's Judai! Nice to meet you."

Akiza shook his hand firmly, giving him a smile in return, "I'm Akiza, nice to meet you too."

Judai suddenly yelped as found himself getting pulled into a headlock, Crow cheerfully adding, "He's _also_ Yusei's boyfriend!"

"I could've told her myself, you know," Yusei sighed, joining their little circle in the middle of the room. Akiza laughed as Judai did his best to get out of the headlock despite not having a good grip while Crow teased him about 'not being shy about it!' and messing up his hair in the process. Finally having enough of this, Judai secretly let a shadow trail out and pull Crow's arm back just enough for him to slip quickly out of it and hide behind Yusei.

"Not fair!" Crow whined, though Judai warily watched as his face was quick to brighten once again, "At least I still have fodder against you! Maybe you'll be less shy about it if I show-"

"No!" Judai exclaimed, giving him a slightly pleading look, "You do _not_ show those to anyone!"

"You guys... Sorry Aki, these two seem to feed off each other's energy. Judai has just as much as Crow," Yusei said, giving her an apologetic smile.

"I don't mind at all," she replied with a grin, "It's actually rather refreshing, to be honest. I've been stuck working on a project for the last few days and the entertainment is welcome." She glanced around the room for a moment before asking, "What happened to Jack?"

"Oh, we uh... almost forgot to message the twins about today?" Crow replied sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head, "He drove off about five minutes before you got here to go get them, so it'll probably be another twenty or so minutes before they're back - you know how long it can take to get Lua out of bed sometimes."

"They also said something about a board game they'd found that they wanted to try, so they're bringing that with them," Judai added, moving so he wasn't hiding behind Yusei anymore, "Anyway, in the meantime, you want anything? Water, tea, coffee, snacks?"

Akiza blinked at him in suprise, "You mean they have something other than water, coffee, and instant ramen now?"

He broke down laughing on the spot, tears coming to his eyes from the fact that she'd had the same exact reaction as Lua and Luka. Yusei looked at her in slight betrayal before burying his head in his hands once again from the embarrassment, though this time the reaction was even better because Crow choked on nothing, coughing while his face turned pink in embarrassment as well.

"That reaction will never get old to me," Judai mused, wiping the tears from his eyes as he calmed down and explained to the confused girl, "Lua and Luka reacted the same exact way. Go have a look at the kitchen - it's my pride and joy and my contribution to this place."

She did so, giving it an owlish look before turning back to him, "It's a completely different kitchen..."

Judai laughed again, motioning for her to go in, "Come on, let me show you what we've got in here. There's an actual selection of food and drink now, after all."

He grinned as he went about getting drinks, listening in to the hushed conversation Crow was having with Yusei back in the living room. Little did they know that he could pick up on it just fine thanks to his slightly enhanced hearing from his powers.

"Did he just call the kitchen his pride and joy, Yusei?"

"...Yes. The very first thing he vowed to do when he got here was fix the kitchen, hence the reason he started dueling in tournaments in the first place."

"It was so he could get money to fix the kitchen?!"

"He said that there was no way he'd let me continue eating instant ramen everyday, and that he'd help my 'misery end soon'."

"...He kind of acts like a housewife to you."

"...Bad Crow, that's rude-"

Aw, Yusei was defending his honor-

"-though I will admit I wouldn't mind that, his cooking's spoiled me."

Now Judai just felt torn between being proud and wanting to strangle him for agreeing that he was like a housewife.


	54. Psychic Duelists

**_2/23/19_**

"We're here!" Lua shouted, running through the door the second Jack got it open. Luka followed exasperatedly behind him while Jack put down a bag next to where Akiza's was by the door.

"Welcome back!" Judai greeted with a grin, popping his head out of the kitchen entrance, "We're in here, come on - get whatever drinks and stuff you want."

Lua was quick to run past him and greet Akiza enthusiastically, the girl laughing at his antics and greeting him back. Luka entered after giving Judai a happy smile and a quick 'thanks', making her way next to her brother.

"What's in the bag?" Judai asked.

"That game they wanted to play. It's apparently like Clue?" Jack responded, waving to him while going up the stairs, "Anyway, I'll be down in a bit - I need to respond to an email that came in while I was gone."

Judai hummed in acknowledgement, ducking back into the kitchen and sitting back down in his seat next to Yusei. The twins had taken up seats next to Akiza, and together were complaining about school.

"Aw man, that sucks- we were actually just here the other day because we needed Yusei's help with a project of our own," Lua said, responding to a comment Akiza had made about being busy the last few days.

"At least it was simple in concept," Akiza sighed, "I just had to research an older pro duelist and write about their strategies and such. However, because of what she told us to focus on, it took a lot longer than you'd expect..."

"Who did you pick?" Luka asked curiously, cracking open a bottle of soda with a smile.

"I actually went with my professor's husband," Akiza chuckled, "Manjoume Jun."

Judai felt himself choke on his drink for the second time that day, "Asuka married Jun?! What the hell happened?!"

Yusei, being the wonderful boyfriend that he was, pat his back as he coughed and tried to clear his shock.

"Eh? Wait, you know Professor Tenjoin?" Akiza asked, blinking at him in confusion. The twins at this point were used to Judai being full of surprises, so they just waited for the inevitable explanation.

"I uh- I went to high school with her and Jun," Judai explained, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, "I may or may not have jumped through time twenty or so years?" He looked to Yusei for help in explaining.

"He's a psychic duelist and happened to have very good reasons to go through time," Yusei added. Luckily the other three seemed to catch on, just like Jack and Crow had this morning, that they shouldn't push on the reasons part.

"You're a psychic duelist too?" Akiza blinked.

"Oh! That's right, he can materialize duel monsters just like you can!" Lua exclaimed, gesturing excitedly, "When we came over before he materialized all our partners for us to play with, it was fun playing with Magnen!"

"He can also see duel spirits," Luka pitched in, eyes sparkling slightly, "J-Judai was able to see Kuribon and- Oh! R-Right, Yusei can see duel spirits now too!"

"...I feel like I need to keep in contact with everyone a lot more than I have been for the last few months," Akiza stated, taking in the information, "All this stuff apparently happened and I had no clue..."

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Judai said, giving her a sympathetic look, "I kinda just popped in here on New Year's Day and things have been hectic since then, it's only really been slowing down recently. Besides, you said you were busy with school and stuff, and that's way more important at the moment."

Yusei suddenly turned to study him, narrowing his eyes in thought before giving him a knowing look, "...You weren't a very good student, were you?"

"Ahaha... not at all. I failed nearly all my classes, but they never kicked me out because I was the best duelist at Duel Academy," Judai admitted with a grin, getting some rather hilarious stares from everyone else in the room, "I actually used to draw eyes on the back of my eyelids and sleep through class."

"Seriously?" Crow laughed, "There's no way that actually worked, right?"

"If it's like he said, then they probably just accepted that he would sleep either way, so they just let him be," Akiza replied, a smile appearing on her face, "Ah... is that why Professor Tenjoin is so hard on people that sleep in class or zone out?"

Judai paled slightly, thinking once again about just how mad his friends were going to be when they found out about him. He needed some sort of way that didn't result in them marching up to the apartment and demanding he come with them and explain...

Wait a minute, that could work! It'd give Asuka some time to chew over the thought at least, so she and everyone else might not be so mad when the inevitable happened.

"You've got that look on your face that means you're planning something," Yusei said, slightly wary as he'd come to be whenever Judai came up with a plan he clearly was excited about.

"Akiza, want to help me out with something?" Judai asked, clapping his hands together with a wide smile, "How do you feel about adding in some extra information to that report of yours about Jun?"


	55. Setting Up A Board Game

**_2/24/19_**

"If my grade takes a hit because of this Judai, you're going to have both Professor Tenjoin _and_ me on your tail," Akiza warned, though the glint in her eyes told him that she clearly liked the edits he'd asked her to add in.

"Eh, if that happens I'll talk to her about it, don't worry," Judai replied, a permanent grin stuck on his face as he re-read the lines they'd added in.

The others, who'd been looking over their shoulders to see what they were doing, all let out a slight sigh but were amused anyway.

"Alright, I'm done," Jack announced, stomping down the stairs suddenly, "What've you guys gotten up to down here?"

"Making Akiza's research project much better than before-"

"Judai's attempting to save himself from the wrath of his friends when they inevitably find out he's still alive," Yusei said, cutting off Judai with a mischievous look. Judai pouted, giving him a playful glare that everyone else laughed at.

"If you're not dead on our doorstep when they're done with you, I'll be thoroughly surprised," Jack snorted, "How exactly can you even start to mitigate that with her project?"

"By making fun of my old Duel Academy rival, who happens to be Asuka's husband and the topic of Akiza's project," Judai responded with a happy grin, "Granted, Thunder's the one who proclaimed us to be rivals in the first place, but either way it'll be incredibly obvious that I had some input in the report."

Jack raised an eyebrow at the name, scowling slightly, "You wouldn't happen to be talking about Manjoume Jun, would you? That guy's a goddamn prick-"

"Language, Jack! There's kids around!" Crow piped up with a grin, giving him a playful punch to the arm.

Jack gave him an irritated look before continuing, "-I had to meet him before at a couple tournaments. He was one self-centered bas- _man_ , but a good duelist regardless."

Judai chuckled at his quick corrections, saying, "Sounds like him, alright. Here, wanna read over what we wrote?"

"Hel- _Heck_ yes, let me see this."

Everyone backed up and made room for Jack to read over the report; in the meantime, Judai gathered up all the empty drink cups and put them in the sink to deal with later.

"Well, what are we doing now?" Judai asked, humming slightly as he rejoined the group outside the kitchen.

Lua perked up, asking, "Oh! Can we try the game we brought now? I've been wanting to try it for a while now!" Next to him, Luka nodded in agreement with her brother while looking rather excited as well.

"Sounds fun to me," Akiza said, Crow cheering in agreement as well.

"Why don't you guys go get it while we clear the coffee table and gather up enough chairs?" Yusei suggested, giving the twins an encouraging smile and waving them off. They did so, quickly running back over near the door and starting to rummage through the backpack that Jack had been holding when they first arrived. Meanwhile, the rest of them made quick work of setting up around the couch and the table so that there was enough space for everyone to sit.

Jack joined them a minute later, plopping down in a chair with a slight huff, "If they miss that you're back after reading that, I'll burn my deck. Also, Akiza, I fixed a few grammatical errors you had - I'm great, I know."

Akiza blinked before smiling at him, "Thanks, Jack. I haven't actually proof-read it yet, so..."

"Yeah yeah, whatever."

Judai, Crow, and Yusei all shared a look, grinning at Jack's tsundere tendencies. Crow, never one to pass up an opportunity to tease someone, was quick to drag Jack into a headlock like he'd done to Judai earlier, resulting in another entertaining round of arguments between the two.

Personally, Judai was just glad it wasn't him again.

"Here it is!" Lua shouted, lugging a rather large box over with Luka. How in the world had that fit in that backpack? Eh... maybe it was like his own pack - it looked small, but whenever Judai tried to find anything in it it was liked searching through a void. Gods forbid he ever put anything small in there that wasn't in a bigger case because he'd never find it again, even after dumping the entire thing out onto a table or something.

 _Rest in peace wherever you ended up, small candies from that one family in... whatever country that was._

Yubel laughed at him in the back of his head at the memory, and he grumbled at her in return. They'd been homemade, dammit, and he'd only gotten to have one before they'd disappeared forever. He was still salty about it to this day.

" _Haunted House Mysteries: Duel Monsters Edition_ , huh? You said it was like Clue?" Yusei asked, opening up the box and grabbing the rule book to read through while everyone else pulled out the game pieces and started unwrapping them.

"Well, that's what the description was at least. It looked cool so we got it," Luka replied, looking down at the piece she'd pulled out, "Aw, there's a Kuriboh player piece - can I be this one?"

"Sure, go ahead - you can be whatever you want to be," Judai grinned, noticing another piece, "Oh sweet, Winged Kuriboh! I can't lose now, I can play as my partner!"

"Huh, they must've just picked a bunch of fan favorites," Crow said, holding up a miniature Mokey Mokey and Marshmallon, "How much did this thing cost? These are really well designed."

Lua just shrugged, causing Crow to give him a deadpan stare, "Seriously?"

"Hey, we're not the ones that bought it! Our parents actually sent it to us, telling us to go have fun with our friends..." Lua responded with a slight pout, though Judai was rather happy to see that both the twins had a small smile on their faces; obviously they were starting to think a bit more seriously about that situation with their parents, and the parents themselves were actually trying to be mindful of them.

"Alright, I think I got the gist of it," Yusei said, keeping the rule book open with his finger, "Here's how we set it up..."

And thus, the game began.


	56. And We Have A Winner

**_2/25/19_**

The goal of the game was to actually escape the haunted house, but it was harder than they thought it would be, especially considering players could _die to the house._ Due to this, everyone had died save for Judai and Yusei; however, they all watched on in excitement since the two were actively trying to sabotage each other as they slowly pieced together how they were supposed to win the game.

"Let's see here, draw an event card," Judai hummed, taking a card from the correct pile on the side of the board, "Aw crap, 'Card Reaper attacks, roll a four or higher to live'."

Much to Yusei's chagrin, Judai rolled a four and cheered.

"That's the eighth roll event he's passed in a row," Jack grumbled, glaring at the board. He'd been unlucky and lost to a roll event earlier in the game, getting locked in the basement by a bunch of Skull Servants.

"Alright, my turn," Yusei said, rolling the dice and moving around the board into the mansion's kitchen, "Oh, I get another clue." He drew a card from the respective pile before giving a grin.

"You gonna guess how to get out? You have to do it at the end of your turn," Lua asked excitedly, wanting to see the outcome. The others watched on eagerly as well, sipping on drinks while watching the show.

"There's no way you know it already," Judai said, narrowing his eyes at him in disbelief, "There's five different things that have to be done, and we're not even finished with the clue pile."

Unfortunately for Judai, Yusei had gotten the exact clue he'd needed to be one hundred percent certain on how to win. He'd been paying very close attention to what everyone'd been trying to figure out all game, and slowly been knocking out different options until he finally had only a couple things left.

"I definitely do," he replied, grinning at how Judai was starting to look worried, "I'm going to guess this - In order to get out, you have to break the magic circle in the attic, move the Blue-Eyes statue on the left side of the stairwell to the right side instead, light the candles underneath every Kuriboh painting in the playroom, drink the red potion in the kitchen, and flip the hidden switch behind the Dark Magician costume hanging in the armory. Then, the door will unlock to leave."

Akiza and Crow looked over the cards that had been placed separately as the solution to the game before looking back up.

"Dang, you got it in one try!" Crow cheered, Akiza nodding her head next to him in confirmation that Yusei'd won.

Judai pouted, letting his cards fall to the table while giving Yusei a dirty look, "How?! I'd only gotten three of those down in the end!"

"Yusei's just that good!" Lua laughed, excitedly looking over the winning cards with his sister.

"I just payed attention to what everyone else was doing early on," Yusei said with a content smile, "It wasn't too hard to piece together once there was only two of us left and the turns went faster."

Judai was as quick to bounce back from the loss as ever, though, giving Yusei another one of _those_ smiles. He instantly felt himself tense, looking back at the other in wariness - those smiles always promised that he was up to no good, after all. It was something he both loved about the man and had learned to be afraid of.

"Winner has to clean up!" Judai yelled suddenly, clapping his hands together with a wink before gesturing wildly at the twins, "Quick! We must run to play some video games on Yusei's laptop!"

They were quick to pick up on what he said, running with him over to the desk in the corner where Yusei's laptop sat without a moment's hesitation. Yusei couldn't help but smile at their childish antics, though he was left wondering if Judai had something planned to get back at him for winning later; having to clean up the game wasn't something he minded much at all. Judai must have realized this, right?

"Don't worry, we'll help you out," Akiza said, passing Crow the scattered cards to sort through and helping Yusei gather the little duel monsters pieces. He thanked them, putting away the game rather happily.

At least now he could say he'd beaten Judai at something - it's too bad there was no bet this time, though.

...Judai was definitely influencing him, since he'd never felt quite so competitive about games in his life. Then again, considering the bet they'd be making, it was worth it; Yusei might have to start looking into those tag duel tournaments Judai had mentioned wanting to participate in just so they could get the extra money for their gaming habits.


	57. Reprieve

_**2/26/19**_

Judai never did get around to talking with Akiza about psychic duelists beyond the initial reveal that he was one as well, but he didn't worry about it too much because it was supposed to be a day for her to relax anyway. She was the last to leave, Jack having wordlessly volunteered to bring the twins back to their house by revving up his runner once it was brought up, and Crow went with her out of courtesy since it was pretty late at night.

Of course, this left him alone with Yusei in the apartment, and once the door closed behind them he was quick to spin around and kiss him hard. In his surprise, Yusei offered no resistance to being pushed backwards towards the couch, arms automatically reaching up to grip his waist.

"What's gotten into you?" Yusei asked, raising an eyebrow at him once they pulled apart.

Judai gave him a playful glare in return, "I want a rematch of that game. I refuse to believe you actually were able to figure out the answer when there was still a quarter of the deck left!"

To his dismay, Yusei simply gave him a mischievous grin, eyes glinting in amusement as he replied, "To be honest, one of them was a very educated guess. Only one of them, though."

"You guessed?!"

"I made an _educated_ guess," he corrected, "There's a very big difference. Besides, if you'd been paying attention, the rest of the clue cards in the deck were all ones that the others held before they lost and shuffled back in."

What? How could he have possibly known that if they were shuffled when they were put back in? Unless he knew exactly what cards everyone had, there was no way he could've known that the only clues left were those.

Was he counting cards somehow?!

He startled as he felt fingers flick his forehead gently, realizing that he'd been staring at Yusei while lost in thought.

"Careful now, don't think too hard," Yusei teased, smile softening as he pulled him down for a quick peck on the lips, "I just got lucky with my draws, they were all ones I hadn't known yet."

"...I want a rematch at the arcade then, that's less luck-based," Judai mumbled, letting his body relax as he flopped his weight down onto the other.

Yusei let out a quiet huff at the sudden weight, chuckling at his antics, "That can be arranged. How about we just have a set day to do it? We can go out to breakfast and then to the arcade."

Judai smiled at this, humming happily in agreement, "It could be our weekly date night, but instead of night it's morning and early afternoon." He felt Yusei laugh underneath him and went to say more, but before he could he was quickly distracted by fingers starting to lightly scratch at his head.

After a minute or so of blissful silence, Yusei broke it, "I never did say this, did I? Thanks for all you've done with the kitchen, and the food, and just... everything."

"It was no trouble at all," Judai replied, feeling his heart warm at the vocalized appreciation; it was different being told it straight up than hearing it second-hand, and he couldn't help the giddiness that accompanied the feeling. He ended up hugging the other tighter, something which was immediately reciprocated.

"I'm... I'm really happy you're here, Judai," Yusei breathed, leaning his head against Judai's, "I love you."

"I love you too," he whispered back, managing to reach around and hold one of his hands in his.

They didn't move for a while, enjoying each other's presence until Judai suddenly remembered something, turning to give Yusei a teasing smirk. He reveled in the moment, noting how Yusei's face immediately switched from questioning to something akin to pleading for mercy.

"So," Judai stated, smirk turning more so into a shit-eating grin, "You wouldn't mind having me as a housewife, eh?"

Yusei blanched, giving him a startled look and sputtering to try and defend himself, "I- You heard that? That's not what I meant-"

"Is my cooking really that good? I'm spoiling you, huh?"

"J-Judai-"

"It's a shame, if I'm really spoiling you that much then I guess I'll just have to cut back on cooking..."

Yusei sent him a clearly panicked look, and he cackled in glee at the sheer horror he held at possibly not getting his cooking anymore.

"Aw, don't worry, I won't do that," he soothed, patting him on the head, "But!~ Only if you give me another free pass to make you do whatever I want again."

Judai grinned in success when Yusei begrudgingly agreed, though clear relief showed through his eyes.

"I _knew_ you were planning something," Yusei muttered, giving him a dirty look, "I didn't even know you could hear from that far away."

Judai just hummed happily at his victory, glad that he'd gotten to win at something today.


	58. Vulnerability

**_2/27/19_**

Judai'd been pacing around the room for an hour now, and Yusei was starting to get worried to the point that he couldn't focus on his work anymore. With a sigh, he closed his laptop and spun around in his chair, determined to figure out what was wrong.

"Judai, what's bothering you?" He asked, noting that the other had startled ever so slightly when he spoke up - definitely not a good sign. The last time he'd seen Judai pace so much had been just before the first tournament he'd dueled in, and even then it hadn't been nearly this much.

"I'm fi-" Judai started to say before seemingly thinking better, cutting himself off with a sigh and tousling his hair, "I just... It's..."

While Judai struggled to get his words out, Yusei took it upon himself to lead him over to the couch and pull him into his chest; he smiled when he felt Judai relax slightly, bringing up a hand so he could stroke his hair soothingly.

"...I can't stop worrying about what their reactions will be," Judai eventually whispered, pulling as close as he could to Yusei, "They're- they're all going to know, and it's going to happen any day now."

"The most you're going to have to worry about is getting lectured and then cried on," Yusei hummed, "After all, they're your friends - clearly they care about you."

"I _know_ that but I can't help feeling like they'll hate me or something," Judai admitted, his grip tightening on his jacket.

"They won't," Yusei reassured, "Sure, a lot of them will be angry with you, but not out of hate; they're upset because they love you and missed their friend, who disappeared for twenty years without a trace."

Judai laughed softly at that, "Yeah, that's true - I deserve that much at least for not telling anyone besides Yugi what I was doing. For them it will have been years of worrying, while for me it's been barely a year since I last saw one of them."

"...I already kind-of assumed you hadn't, but if you don't mind me asking, why?" Yusei asked curiously, making sure to press a kiss to the top of Judai's head in reassurance.

He didn't respond for a minute or two, but right when Yusei was about to move on from the topic he spoke up, "I didn't- It was selfish, but I didn't want to hear their protests and worries. Don't... feel like I deserve that from them, not after what I've done."

Yusei stayed quiet, letting Judai talk at his own pace - clearly this was something he'd never talked about with anyone else besides the two he'd fused with, and that didn't really count when they were involved as well. He rested his head on top of Judai's and made sure that he never stopped his ministrations to his hair, trying to help him remain as calm as possible.

"At one point, Haou woke up and was the one in control, though I was still relatively aware of what was happening and could talk to him. The entire island the academy was on was stuck in one of the spirit dimensions, and Yubel was going mad due to the influence of the Light of Destruction, and- even though it was only five days, in that time period we nearly killed everyone," Judai continued, voice shaking slightly as the words just started to spill out, "Yusei, _I_ nearly killed them all- I was _still there_ , I saw everything, but I was too caught up in my own turmoil to even _try_ to stop what was happening.

None of us want to kill, obviously, but at that point in time with the Light of Destruction manipulating everything... I was the only one that could've possibly done anything to stop them, and I didn't. It was sheer luck that a draw was enough to push Haou away and bring me back into control.

The point is, I don't- I tried to kill them all, I don't deserve all their worries and anger and-"

"You didn't though," Yusei stated, cutting him off, earning him startled look from the other as he pulled back slightly so he could look him in the eyes, "You didn't kill any of them."

"But I tried to-"

"But, in the end, you didn't. There's a lot of extenuating circumstances that led to it, and clearly there were a lot of evil forces at play; Judai, you're not at fault for any of that. I guarantee your friends never blamed you either, because if any of them did, then they were never your friend in the first place."

Judai stared at him wide-eyed, not having any response to what he'd said because it was true and he knew it.

With a soft smile, Yusei leaned down and pressed their foreheads together, saying, "I'll remind you for as long as it takes to get it through your head - you're not a bad person, Judai. Not in the slightest."

He noticed Judai's eyes turn slightly watery, the other exhaling shakily at his words; he quickly laced their fingers together, holding him tightly to show he was serious about what he'd said.

"...You'll be there when they come, right?" Judai asked quietly, squeezing his hands back just as tightly.

"Of course - that's not even a question," Yusei replied, "I'll always be here for you."

"Thank you," Judai whispered, finally letting the few tears fall.

Yusei was quick to wipe them away before pulling him in for a long, soft kiss; they wouldn't part for quite a while afterwards, though once they did, Yusei was elated to find that Judai was smiling in genuine happiness.


	59. Interlude - Internet Discovery

**_2/28/19_**

Asuka stared down at the report in her hands with wide-eyes, reaching for her phone without looking and dialing a number quickly. While it rang, she read through the report as fast as she could, barely able to believe what she was reading every other paragraph.

"Asuka?" A voice rang out through the phone, finally having picked up, "What's up? You don't usually call me-"

"Jun, Judai's back."

He made a choked noise in response, shock lacing his voice, "W-what? Did you just say that-"

" _Judai's back_ ," she stressed, "I'm one-hundred percent sure of it. I'll explain in the group chat in a few moments, but right now? _You're_ the one that has access to government databases, _find him._ " She heard the sounds of a keyboard being pressed at frightening speeds; the lack of response from her husband was quite telling about how serious this was to him... and all of them, really.

"Holy shit, he's in the system. I don't know how but he's _in the system,_ " Jun stated, "Goddammit, of course he's in the fucking system, it's Judai - that idiot gets away with fucking everything!"

"What? What do you mean?" Asuka asked, finishing the report and flipping back to the first page so she could re-read it.

"His entire profile got changed! I still have copies of what it was before, but now it's like he never was gone in the first place! Hell, whoever did this covered every single fucking base possible - date of birth, age, status, proper graduation papers for a different year of Duel Academy, you name it and if you hadn't already known what it was before you'd never be able to tell."

Asuka paused at that, thinking for a moment before frowning and asking, "What's it say his age is?"

"Twenty-two."

That number sounded familiar... she did the math in her head, thinking about the year that he completely fell out of contact with everyone. That had been how long ago? A little less than twenty years, right? If everyone was in their early forties then that would mean... time travel?

She sucked in a breath through her teeth at the realization, and to be honest she wouldn't put it past Judai to be able to figure out how to do such a thing. To actually go through with it, though?

Well, now she was just worried; it didn't seem like something he would do voluntarily, so maybe he was forced to? Gah, all this speculation was going to give her a headache.

"And does it have a current home address?"

"Yeah, it does. Hold on, I'll look it up and see if it tells us anything..."

"Alright, you do that. I'm going to go in the group chat now and let everyone know - see if you can find out any other information while you're at it, if you do then post it," she replied, get a determined hum of agreement back before she hung up and got to texting, uploading a PDF version of her student's essay to show how she knew.

Speaking of said student, she'd have to talk with Akiza later and see what exactly she knew - had she been in contact with him somehow? Wait no, that was a stupid question - there's no way she could've gotten most of that information without the man himself telling her it. Regardless, it was a good essay, and she quickly jotted down an A as her score so she wouldn't forget later.

She got replies almost immediately, with everyone freaking out and then quickly starting to discuss how to drag him out of wherever he was hiding so they could roast his ass for disappearing on them. Hilariously enough, Johan was the one who first voiced his thoughts about giving him a good tongue lashing, though everyone was quick to share the sentiment.

At this point Jun had joined the chat, uploading a plethora of information and pictures that completely silenced everyone for a long while as they went through it all.

And then Sho found a video of Judai dueling in a very public tournament, and they went into an uproar again, resulting in them all moving onto computers so they could video call each other and share a screen.

"That's definitely the idiot," Jun muttered, his arms crossed as they all watched the video together, "Has the stupid Winged Kuriboh and heroes and everything."

"How the hell did we miss this? He's literally been in the public eye since New Year's, we should've known by now!" Sho despaired, fiddling with his glasses while trying to soothe his nerves.

"Hey Asuka, you see what I see in the recommended list?" Johan asked, a wide grin taking up his face now that he'd had a bit of time to process that his best friend was still alive; clearly his desire to lecture Judai to hell and back had been beaten out by this simple fact, though Asuka was still very much looking forward to joining him when it inevitably happened later.

For the moment though, she looked through the side bar and almost immediately found the video he was talking about. It took a moment to process the title and thumbnail, but when she finally did she realized why Johan's smile seemed to be threatening to split his face in half.

 _'TheSupremeHERO and StarSavior Meme Compilation (DDOnline)'_ was the title, and the thumbnail... oh man, the thumbnail.

She clicked on it quickly, interrupting the last part of the tournament video they'd been watching. Edo and Kenzan started to complain before trailing off with wide-eyes, watching the new video with just as much interest as the rest of them.

"You know, I'm not even surprised at this point," Johan laughed, taking in the vast amount of photos people had taken and layered jokes on top of from the game, "It's Judai after all, _of course_ he'd be able to make friends with Yusei Fudo of all people."

"They're _clearly_ more than friends, Johan," Edo snorted, raising an eyebrow at the camera, "Do you even have eyes?"

"...Wait a minute, hold on," Jun interrupted, eyes narrowing as he started typing away.

"What's up?" Asuka asked, looking curiously at him. Everyone watched on with growing interest as his face suddenly did a weird twitch, staring at his screen in amusement.

"I _knew_ that address was familiar!" Jun smirked, slamming his hands down on the desk, "He's living with Yusei Fudo, Crow Hogan, and that fucking Jack-ass Atlas!"

"Damn, how the hell did he end up there?" Edo whistled, "Man, that must be one... _interesting_ time living in that apartment."

Asuka blinked, putting the pieces together and sighing - at least that cleared up how Akiza knew Judai. Being her teacher, she'd been privy to the fact that she was a Signer because it had affected her education, which was part of the reason why she was even in her class in the first place - extra credits that also happened to look good, because she'd missed out on a lot of stuff while having to perform her duties. Of course, she couldn't be faulted for it and was accommodated accordingly because it wasn't something she could help at all.

"Well, I say we start planning on... _meeting_ him," she said, causing everyone to get a gleam in their eyes.

It was time to plan.


	60. Mental Preparation

**_3/1/19_**

Judai was extremely thankful for Yusei - the man had taken to distracting him with things whenever he noticed that Judai was starting to overly stress out again, and it did wonders for his nerves as a few days passed without anything happening.

And then, of course, Judai felt a familiar, powerful presence hit his sensory range. It was light, but the good kind; it was warm and held a certain air to it that felt solid, like a rock - or rather, in this case, a gemstone. It was Johan after all, he'd recognize that feeling anywhere and it would seem that twenty years did nothing to his bright personality.

He tensed immediately, knowing that this meant they were coming sometime within the next day or so and that he'd have to start steeling himself for it. Don't get him wrong, he was excited for it in a way considering they were his friends and he was very curious to see how far they'd come in their lives - he still couldn't wrap his head around Asuka and Jun getting _married_ , how did that happen? But he'd been avoiding them for so long out of guilt that he was terrified of their response to him.

He hadn't told Yusei about that part, but he was a smart cookie and had probably put together by now that it'd been a few more years than twenty since he'd last talked to them. The only way they'd known he was still alive for a while there was because he'd accidentally ran into Sho a year before he'd time hopped and then somehow been dragged to meet with Johan a bit afterwards and-

Judai startled at a sudden pain in his hand, jerking it away with a swear.

Right, he'd been cooking. He must've accidentally let his hand fall down to touch the pan while he was lost in his thoughts.

"Judai? Everything okay?" Yusei asked, his head popping out from the kitchen entrance.

"Burned myself, it's fine," Judai mumbled, carefully inspecting the injury, "Yeah, it'll heal up in a few hours, it's pretty mild."

"Still, you should wrap it so you don't accidentally make it worse. You sit, I'll go get the bandages," Yusei replied with a concerned frown, leaving to go get the first aid kit from the bathroom.

There's nothing quite like an adrenaline rush and a bit of pain to knock him back to his senses, but it worked well and he wasn't going to question it.

Judai shrugged to himself, double-checking the food to make sure it hadn't overcooked before lowering the heat and pulling out a chair at the kitchen table. Soon enough, Yusei was back and popping open the first aid kit, gently taking his hand in his and starting to wrap it after putting a bit of burn cream on it.

"Thanks," Judai said, suddenly feeling very tired now that he was sitting down.

 _"You're stressing out too much over this, it's not healthy_ ," Yubel murmured to him, and Judai knew she was right but couldn't really help it.

 _What am I supposed to do about it?_ Judai replied back, not really expecting much besides a 'go sleep' or a 'go play that dueling game of yours'.

Surprisingly, what he got was an answer from Haou, " _...Considering it's already afternoon, you're clear for the rest of the day. If you wanted to you could go take a mental nap while I take over._ "

That was... that was actually a really good idea, now that he thought about. The great thing about checking out like that was that it let Judai recuperate mentally in a way that usually wasn't possible, so it would end with him being far less stressed when the time finally did come to meet his friends.

Besides, it'd been about month since Haou had gotten his time outside so it was just good timing as well, and there was a freshly cooked meal that was basically already done, it just had to be stirred a few times and plated.

"No problem," Yusei responded, giving him a smile once he'd finished with the bandages and put everything away. He went and put the first aid kit back before returning to the kitchen, where Judai had just finished preparing the food.

"Yusei, Haou wants his monthly food adventure," Judai said, turning around to face him with a grin - just _thinking_ about that mental nap had already put him into a good mood again, after all, "Is that okay with you right now?"

Yusei blinked, tilting his head in thought before nodding, "Yeah, that's fine - I needed to take a break anyway, I've been working on that project since early this morning."

"Thanks," Judai said, sighing slightly in relief, "I've really been needing a mental nap anyway, all this waiting's been stressing me out too much."

"Those help a lot?" Yusei asked curiously. Judai couldn't help but smile at the happy, relieved twinge that came over the other; he always got a warm, happy feeling whenever Yusei showed he cared about him and his well-being.

"Oh yeah, they help a lot in that regard," Judai responded, smiling widely as he flopped down into a chair again, "Something about it letting me process info and emotions more thoroughly, or something like that - can't remember the whole explanation to be honest, but you get the gist of it. I'm gonna go now then, okay? Have fun!"

Judai wondered for a moment if he'd wake up to something ridiculous like last-time, with the huge plushies and all those game codes. For now though, he closed his eyes and fell back into his mind, ready to take a break from worrying.


	61. Passing Time

**_3/2/19_**

Yusei watched in slight amusement as Haou quickly helped himself to a third plate of food while he was barely finishing his first (and only). Yubel looked on from the side as well, sharing his sentiment with a smile.

"What'd you want to do this time?" Yusei asked, taking one of his last few bites of food; at this point, he was pretty sure Judai was a stress-cooker, but it's not like he was going to complain - he got free, home-cooked meals out of it while Judai got to distract himself, so it was really a win-win situation.

"Well, there was something but it will have to wait for next month considering the circumstances," Haou replied in between bites, still mostly focused on the food in front of him.

What circumstances? Had something happened?

Thankfully Yubel noticed his clear confusion, explaining, "The reason Judai got so distracted earlier was because he felt one of his friends enter the city. He's been spreading his senses out over the perimeter for a couple weeks now, and this friend happens to have a very strong presence that's easily noticeable if you're looking for signatures."

"He has nearly all light in his soul, we would've noticed him the second he got within ten miles anyway," Haou muttered, "That boy's basically a walking beacon to us."

"Ah, so that's why," Yusei hummed, "You can't go out in case they decide to confront you despite it being the afternoon already."

"The last thing we need is for them to see Haou," Yubel said, a displeased grimace coming to her face, "That wouldn't end well at all. All they'd have to see are the gold eyes and they'd start making wild accusations."

Yusei frowned at this, though he understood why it absolutely couldn't happen - from what Judai had told him, he assumed that he'd never told anyone else that Haou was even still around, let alone talking with him and still able to take over control when they agreed to. After he'd tried to kill them, it's no wonder that they figured Judai's friends wouldn't take too kindly to the news.

They hadn't taken very well to the news that he'd fused with Yubel, after all, so it wasn't too far-fetched to think that they'd have an even worse reaction to Haou. Yusei may not like keeping secrets from people, but even he agreed that this was one that needed to be kept.

"Well, in the meantime, you have any ideas on what to do?" Yusei asked, steering them away from that depressing topic. It wouldn't do to think about what-ifs, especially ones that they planned on never letting happen in the first place.

Haou pushed his now-empty plate to the side, crossing his arms and closing his eyes in thought before answering, "...We could duel? I must admit, I'm interested in seeing what your deck is."

"Sounds good to me," Yusei shrugged, standing up from the table, "Let me go get my deck then, we can just do a table-top duel on the coffee table."

Haou nodded, standing up as well and stretching, "I'll do the same then. My deck is a bit... special, after all. I have to summon it here, as I haven't used it in a long time."

Yusei was going to ask, but he ultimately decided against it, just going up and grabbing his deck holder before coming back down. He ended up getting his answer anyways, though, when he witnessed Haou pull a deck out of a random shadow in the middle of the room, dark wisps floating off it for a few moments before dispersing.

At this point, it was such a normal thing to have things like this happen that he didn't even question them anymore. Such is the life of a... well, a King of Games, he supposed, based off everything that Judai'd told him so far about not just his world-saving adventures, but Yugi's as well. Magic, duel spirits, shadow duels, kings, the list went on and really, who was keeping track of it anymore?

Yusei definitely wasn't, and mostly for his own sanity.

Yubel cackled at his reaction, telling him that he'd probably made some sort of face from his thoughts.

"This ought to be an interesting duel," Yubel hummed, looking on in interest from where she was floating next to the table. She'd purposefully placed herself in such a way that she couldn't see either person's hand, making it more suspenseful to watch.

"Let's have a good match, alright?" Yusei smiled, starting to get more excited for the duel as he shuffled his deck and held it out to be cut.

"Same to you, I already know you're a worthy opponent," Haou replied, and though he wasn't smiling Yusei could see the eager glint in his eyes.

"...Duel!"


	62. Interruptions

**_3/3/19_**

They were barely even able to get a few turns into the duel, only just starting to pull out their more powerful monsters, when the door slammed open to reveal a grumpy Jack and amused Crow. Yusei shared a look with Haou and Yubel, the latter sighing with similar conflicted looks.

"Damn it, and it was just getting interesting," Yubel sighed, giving the newcomers a glare they couldn't see, "How're you going to handle this one? Do we tell them?"

Haou nodded discretely, a thoughtful look coming over him now that the initial shock had passed. From the way Yubel raised her eyebrows at him, Yusei figured that they were talking through their mental link about what to do.

In the meantime, Yusei turned his attention to the other two.

"Stupid interviewer knows nothing about me," Jack growled out, a twitch in his eye, "What does she mean I don't qualify? I can do basic math, damn it!"

Crow snorted, clearly getting some enjoyment out of his misery before dodging the hand that came swiping at his head..

"Did you fail another job interview?" Yusei asked, raising an eyebrow slightly in wonder, "How many is that now?"

"Twenty-four, Yusei. He's failed twenty-four job interviews now," Crow replied with a grin, much to Jack's chagrin.

The blond glared at both of them, daring them to say anything more before he noticed what was happening by the coffee table.

"Are you two dueling?" Jack asked, walking over to look at the table. Crow followed behind him, interested as well about the duel.

"We... were?" Yusei responded hesitantly, glancing over at Haou in question and wondering if he should say something. Needless to say, the confident, almost-playful look he got back in response was... worrying, to say the least; combined with the fact that Yubel was starting to laugh to herself quietly, it didn't bode well for keeping a quiet atmosphere.

"You called yourself a 'king' once, did you not?" Haou asked Jack, giving off an air of superiority.

Jack narrowed his eyes as he studied Haou, before replying, "The King of Riding Duels- something's different about you..."

"Now that you mention it," Crow added, giving Haou a wary look "Something _is_ different... wait, are those gold eyes?"

"My name is Haou," he replied, eyes lazily flickering between the two, "Think of me as... Judai's older brother. We share a soul, and I'm the reason he can control the shadows. He decided to take a mental break for the day, so I'm here instead."

"Share a soul? Mental break?" Crow frowned, before shaking his head, "Well, I suppose if Yusei's apparently fine with this, then you must be okay. Nice to meet'cha Haou-"

"You're- you're not even going to keep questioning this?!" Jack exclaimed in disbelief, whipping around to look at Crow incredulously.

"Jack, right?" Haou mused, earning back Jack's attention, "The King of Riding Duels... seems like that must be the only thing you're good at, considering what was spoken earlier about your previous failures at working."

Yusei sighed, suddenly getting the urge to go get something to drink because this was going to be a long rest of his day. He really should've guessed that Haou planned on provoking Jack for entertainment, because of course he would - there was no one to stop him from doing so, and he probably never got to have little spats like this, even with Judai.

Next to him, Yubel started cackling at the enraged face Jack made in response, "Now _this_ is an interesting way to spend the afternoon! Get him good, Haou!"

"Why you- that's it, I'll be the judge of whether you're good or not! Duel me, right now!" Jack scowled, swinging back around to glare at Haou.

"With pleasure," Haou responded amusedly, still giving off a superior air, "I'll be sure to revel in my victory over a false king like you."

Scratch that, Yusei was going to need painkillers soon to stave off the headache that was sure to follow Jack's continuous yelling. He'd only gotten a glimpse of what Haou's deck could do, but even then he could tell that Jack was going to have a hard time defeating him; Jack, being Jack of course, would most definitely keep challenging him in frustration, and then inevitably to other things like video games when he couldn't win a duel.

On that note, he got up and wandered into the kitchen to go get some nice, hot tea, though he made sure to give Haou a thumbs-up as he passed by - it was still a pretty smart way to deal with a distrustful Jack Atlas, after all, even if the results were headache-inducing. All in all, it was pretty much the best outcome to the unforeseen situation that they could've hoped for.

Now he just had to hope that Crow didn't get caught up with all their competitiveness, or else he'd have chaos on his hands.


	63. Jack and Haou Duel

**_3/4/19_**

While they shuffled their decks, Haou calmly asked, "Eight thousand life points or four thousand?"

"Why would we start with four thousand?" Jack replied, scowl still stuck on his face, "That sounds ridiculous."

"I suppose someone like you _would_ be too afraid of starting with such little life points," Haou goaded, eyes glinting dangerously, "You'd lose far too quickly, otherwise."

That, of course, was the correct thing to say to provoke Jack's sense of pride.

"Alright, you know what? We'll fucking start with four thousand, and we'll see if you're still all high and mighty when you lose!" Jack exclaimed, passing his deck over, "Now cut the deck and let's do this."

Haou hummed, doing so and passing it back, "You may go first, as you're the challenger... you'll need the turn, in any case."

Jack's eyebrow twitched in annoyance as he drew his cards, while Haou's face remained as neutral as ever - well, if you disregarded the amusement in his eyes, at least. It may not have been obvious to the other two in the room, but to Yusei it was clear to see.

He sighed from where he sat next to Crow, having pulled up a couple extra chairs while Jack had been getting his deck earlier. Luckily he'd gotten that mug of tea he'd wanted before they could start, so at least he had something to occupy himself with other than watching his two friends' spat. It may be entertaining, but as he'd stated before, it was also very loud and could easily turn headache-inducing.

"This should be interesting," Crow said, looking on curiously, "Man, if his deck's cool I might want to duel him myself."

Yusei hummed in acknowledgment, watching as Jack took his first turn and set one monster and set two cards in his back row. Not exactly his usual first turn, seeing as he'd usually summon out something in attack mode, but he probably hadn't drawn any of his usual attackers.

"Draw," Haou stated, barely glancing at the card before continuing, "Because I control no monsters, I can special summon Evil Hero Infernal Prodigy from my hand. Then, I activate the effect of Evil Hero Malicious Edge - I can tribute summon it with only one tribute if my opponent controls a monster. Now, Malicious Edge attacks your face-down."

Jack scowled, flipping his monster card up to reveal Dark Resonator, "The first time each turn that Dark Resonator would be destroyed by battle, it isn't."

"Malicious Edge deals piercing damage."

Jack growled at that, turning his glare to Yusei when he marked down the life point difference while Crow whistled, "Damn, that's over half your life points gone already Jack."

"Shut up, Crow."

Haou continued, "I place one card face-down, then because Infernal Prodigy was used to tribute summon an 'Evil Hero' monster this turn, I get to draw one card. Your turn."

Jack grumbled, drawing his next card. Things really weren't looking great for him, though based off the face he made he may just have a solution.

"Alright, time to show you why I'm King! I activate polymerization, fusing together Medium Piece Golem and Big Piece Golem in my hand to summon Multiple Piece Golem," Jack smirked, "Then I equip it with Megamorph, which doubles its attack points because I have less life points than you. Now, I attack your Malicious Edge with-"

Haou lazily flipped his single card in the back row, "Negate Attack."

Jack scowled, passing his turn. Haou drew his next card, and Yusei instantly knew from the snort Yubel gave off that he'd won the duel because of what he'd drawn.

"I activate Super Polymerization," Haou said, "By discarding one card, I can fusion summon a fusion monster using monsters on either side of the field. Also, no cards or effects can be activated in response to Super Polymerization's activation."

"What the hell is that bullshit card?!"

Haou finally allowed himself to smile ever-so slightly in victory, pissing off Jack even more, "I use Multiple Piece Golem and Malicious Edge to fusion summon Evil HERO Malicious Fiend. During your battle phase, all monsters on your side of the field are changed to attack position and must attack this card."

"...This is bullshit!" Jack yelled, barely keeping himself from throwing his cards up in the air as he checked his next draw and came up with nothing to counter Haou.

"You barely lasted four turns," Haou mused, "I suppose this just confirms that a King of Riding Duels is no match for the Supreme King of Darkness."

"The what what?" Crow asked, turning to Yusei in question.

Yusei just shrugged, giving him a quick nod in confirmation before going back to his drink and pulling out his phone while Jack yelled for a rematch in the background.

Much to his satisfaction, Jack lost the next few duels as well. Maybe it'd teach him to have a bit more humility... stars, maybe if he learned that he'd actually be able to get a job.

Yusei could dream, after all.


	64. Different Card Games

**_3/5/19_**

Yusei glanced at his hand before looking up to see a manic gleam in Jack's eyes and disappointment in Crow's; if there was one thing he could be sure about, it was that they couldn't hold a poker face to save their lives. On the other hand, Haou was _extremely_ good at holding a poker face, which... well, it made winning a hand of high-low split poker much harder. Surprisingly Yubel was doing a pretty damn good job at not laughing whenever Haou got a ridiculously good hand, so Yusei couldn't use her as a judge of how good his hand was for this game.

Needless to say, Haou was destroying them. Yusei himself wasn't actually doing that bad since he was a safe player and wasn't afraid to call out low, which netted him a fair few wins purely because he was the only one to do so some rounds. However, Haou's goal in this was to piss off Jack as much as he could, so he called high every time because Jack would always call high.

"Alright guys, ready? Thumbs up for high, thumbs down for low," Crow said, everyone holding out their fists, "Three, two, one, go!"

He and Crow went low while Jack and Haou obviously went high.

"Seven," Yusei said, placing his hand down on the table.

"Of course you would get that," Crow muttered, revealing his pair of two's. They were quick to move their attention to the other two though, who were about to reveal their hands.

"I've got a straight flush," Jack smirked triumphantly, slamming his cards down on the table for everyone to see. Crow whistled lowly in response, turning wide-eyed to say something before pausing as Haou calmly placed his hand down.

"Royal flush," he said, finally dropping the poker face and allowing the widest smirk Yusei'd seen him make yet to appear on his face. Yubel started laughing wildly behind him, muttering between breaths something about the chances of drawing such a hand.

"Bull-fucking-shit!" Jack yelled, finally losing it, "There's no way! You have to be cheating!"

Meanwhile, Crow was still gaping down at the cards on the table, "Holy shit, it's an actual royal flush."

"It's fucking not!"

"I'm not cheating."

At this point Yusei'd had just about enough of this, so he decided to escape to his and Judai's room after taking a quick detour to the kitchen to get another drink. Should he get coffee? If he did, then he could take the painkillers with it, and the caffeine would make them work faster...

Humming, he decided to make coffee after all, quickly loading the brewer with the required materials almost absentmindedly.

In the background the arguing continued, though Yusei didn't really mind it so much now that he was in a different room. Now that Jack wasn't yelling right next to his ear, he could find the hilarity in the situation.

"Prove it!"

"An actual royal flush..."

"Why would I cheat? Victory would mean nothing if I did."

"You're a pompous, cheating _asshole_."

"I am none of those things."

"I-I should take a picture of this, this is legendary-"

"I refuse to believe you aren't cheating. God, we've played how many different games in the last five hours? And you haven't lost once!"

"I lost at Go Fish, Yusei won."

"That doesn't fucking count because you still beat me at it!"

Yusei heard Jack let out a yell while he was getting out the bottle of painkillers, his coffee slowly being brewed into his mug; he was sure it would end with a crash, but to his surprise, there was only another choked sound of outrage.

"...It's not very befitting of a 'King', even a false one, to become so enraged as to try and flip a table."

"I've returned with the camera! Thanks for making sure he didn't ruin the table, Haou!"

"Goddammit, let go of me! Don't take a goddamn picture of it Crow, there's no way it's a real royal flush-"

"Those shadows are really versatile, huh? And Jack, stop being a sore loser."

Haou hummed in pride while Jack let out more profanities in response.

Yusei sighed in happiness as he gulped down two pills before slipping past the commotion and upstairs, though he caught Haou's eye before fully exiting to make sure it was okay. He pointed up to the room in question, pointedly ignoring the fuming blond being held in place by shadows near the table, and upon getting a nod in response, made his way up and shut the door behind him.

Back to work he went, then. At least the door shut out most of the noise so he could do so in peace. Thanks the stars he liked his work so much because he could easily get lost in it and ignore everything else, and by the time he tuned back in to the world of the living, a more relaxed Judai would probably be back in control.

Actually, now that he thought about it... Judai _had_ told him the names of his friends, and he could probably figure out where they were in the city. It might help him worry a bit less about it if he knew exactly who was here so he could prepare himself better.

Work could wait, he had more important things to do now.


	65. Judai Is Confused

**_3/6/19_**

Yusei looked up curiously when the door finally opened and closed, revealing a bewildered Judai.

"Yusei, why did Jack scowl at me and slam the door to his room when I woke up?" Judai asked, flopping down on the bed next to him, "Please don't tell me Haou decided to mess with him- oh gods, he did, didn't he?"

"They competed in literally anything they could think of for the entire afternoon until you got back," Yusei replied, quickly closing his laptop and putting it away safely on the bedside table before glancing at the clock, "So... about eight hours, give or take. I left them down there at the five hour mark after Haou pulled out a royal flush against Jack in poker."

Judai snorted at that, "Of course he pulls a royal flush when he needs it most. Well, at least he and Yubel enjoyed themselves." He sat up and scooted over so that he could hug Yusei, letting out a content sigh once he let his head rest on his shoulder.

"You feeling better?" Yusei asked quietly, pulling him closer and laying his head against his.

"Yeah, way better," Judai replied happily, "A lot of the stress was just because I was stressing out in the first place, so chilling out for a while like that helped a lot."

"I'm glad," Yusei said, pressing a kiss to his cheek, "I was a bit worried when you started pacing all the time, you don't normally do that."

"I didn't even realize I was pacing, to be honest."

"Surprisingly, despite how energetic you tend to be, you're more likely to lie down and sleep than pace erratically."

Judai laughed again, pulling him into a quick kiss that he was quick to return.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm still tired," Judai said, leaning his full weight into Yusei, "Like I mentioned before, mental naps may help my brain, but it does nothing for my body and Haou's been doing gods-know-what with it in his little game competition with Jack."

"He used shadows to keep him from flipping the table, and was restraining him with them as well when I left three hours ago," Yusei replied amusedly.

"Yeah, that'll do it," Judai mused, "If he's been actively using those for three hours straight then part of why I'm so tired is because of that."

"Come on, let's go get ready for bed," Yusei smiled, gently pushing him off and edging him towards the bathroom, "Go do your thing while I get changed, then we can switch."

Judai hummed in agreement, picking up his toothbrush and slowly going through the motions while Yusei quickly changed. Once he was done they switched, and minutes later they were crawling under the bed sheets and cuddling each other for warmth.

"Oh yeah, before I forget," Yusei mumbled, shifting Judai around a bit so his arm didn't fall asleep underneath his weight, "I looked up which of your friends was actually in the city and made a list of them along with who was staying where, so you'd know who to expect."

"I love you so fuckin' much," Judai muttered into his chest. Yusei felt him practically melt in his arms when he brought his hand up to stroke his hair softly, body relaxing nearly immediately upon doing so.

"Love you too," Yusei replied with a grin, "Now go to sleep, you can look at it in the morning."


	66. Going Over Info

**_3/7/19_**

Judai happily shoved another bite of egg into his mouth the next morning, reading over the list Yusei had made for him. The slight clank of a mug on the table made him look up to see a full cup of whatever magical coffee concoction Yusei was somehow always able to whip up for him.

"Thank you!" Judai sang happily, ignoring the chuckle the other gave at his eagerness. Yusei still hadn't told him what went into the drink, but at this point as long as he got it he was happy; he swore he was being scammed into a coffee addiction, though _only_ for this specific coffee.

Yusei pulled out a chair next to him, digging into his own breakfast after downing half of his own cup of coffee first. They ate in peaceful silence, enjoying the morning and the fact that Crow and Jack had left early to go do things they needed to do.

Once he finished eating, Judai spoke up, "There's a lot of 'em, but it's not _all_ of them, so it shouldn't be total chaos at least. Man, how'd you even get this stuff anyway?"

"You forget that I technically work for the government," Yusei replied, finishing off his own food, "After all, I can't exactly work on the reactor without approval. Because of that, I have access to some of the database, which makes it really easy to get into the rest of it to look for information."

"Oh yeah... Huh, is that how you got my ID and stuff when I first got here?" Judai asked curiously. Yusei hadn't told him back then, though that was probably more so because Judai kept bugging him when he was trying to work.

"No, I can't change any of the information, just look at it," Yusei admitted, "I had to uh... call in a few favors for that one."

Judging from the sheepish look Yusei was sporting, very illegal things occurred to make sure Judai was secure and legal in this time. Judai scooted his chair closer so he could wrap an arm around Yusei's shoulders and kiss him on the cheek.

"Aw, we weren't even dating yet and you were already willing to do illegal things for me," Judai couldn't help but tease, grinning widely when Yusei narrowed his eyes and gave him the stoic version of a pouty glare. Still, there was no way he could hide the pink on his face from Judai, especially when he was this close to him.

"If it makes you feel better, I did plenty of illegal stuff when I was traveling," Judai continued, "After all, border-hopping is hard when you uh... don't have any identification on you. Had to secretly cross with my shadows every time and a couple times I had to knock out security guards."

Yusei stared at him a couple seconds longer before suddenly sighing and smiling, "Ironically, when you think about it, I've also 'border-hopped' and knocked out plenty of security guards before. Guess we're two peas in a pod."

Judai laughed at that, standing up and starting to gather up their now-empty plates, "I guess we are! Well, either way, what I was going to say before was that if you could pull me up a map I could figure out when they plan to make their move. All I have to do is figure out where exactly everything is in comparison to Johan and I'll be able to figure out when they're coming."

Yusei hummed in response, "Haou did mention that he was basically a beacon to you - alright, I'll go get the tablet then, be right back."

By the time Yusei returned, Judai was already done with the dishes and had gotten himself some green tea and started up the coffee maker again for the other. It was the least he could do after Yusei'd made him that amazing, addictive drink again that he still had trouble believing was actual coffee.

"Thanks," Yusei said, swapping the tablet in his hands with the coffee mug being offered to him. Judai shot him a smile, noticing that he'd already pulled up the map for him and locked it onto the hotel Johan was staying at while he'd been finishing up his coffee. Scrolling around the map for a few minutes, he eventually had a pretty good idea of how far everywhere was.

"Now we wait," Judai sighed, leaning on Yusei's side comfortably and resting his head on his shoulder after passing back the tablet so Yusei could use it, "I'll know when they're starting to gather because Johan will probably move towards Asuka and Jun's when the time comes. Haou was right, Johan's a literal beacon of light to us and even now, without stretching my senses out too far, I can tell exactly how far he is from here."

"At least we've got a bit of warning, then," Yusei replied, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, "Just means there's even less to worry about."

Judai hummed in agreement, closing his eyes for a bit and deciding to latch onto Yusei's arm so he could get more comfortable. For now, he had time to enjoy the rest of a peaceful morning with Yusei.


	67. Plans In Motion

**_3/8/19_**

"Ah... he's moving," Judai said a few hours later, sitting up from the coach they'd relocated to beforehand and stretching, "Think they'll actually have the guts to storm this place?"

"Probably, especially if everything you've said about them is accurate," Yusei replied, turning off the tablet and setting it down on the table, "That, and considering many of them came in from different cities just to see you, it'd be odder if they didn't."

"That's true," Judai smiled, giving him a sheepish look, "Sorry about that, Yusei."

"It's not a problem," Yusei assured, raising an eyebrow, "I'd be more worried if Jack and Crow were here, but they aren't so..."

Judai grimaced slightly at the thought, though he couldn't help but laugh at the thought of Jack and Jun interacting - apparently they really didn't like each other and would constantly argue when in each other's presence. Personally, Judai believed it was hilarious and probably spurred by the fact that their personalities were so similar.

" _Drama queens, dear, they're both drama queens,_ " Yubel laughed, " _To be honest though, nothing they argue about could come close to the spectacle that happened yesterday._ "

Judai could feel Haou smirking in the back of his mind, clearly still reveling in his absolute victory against Jack. They'd been nice enough to share their memories of what happened with Judai while they'd been waiting for the past few hours, and Judai had to admit that it was extremely entertaining to witness. He still couldn't believe Jack had tried to flip the table, and the reaction he gave when Haou thwarted him was pure gold.

Judai turned his attention back to Yusei when he hummed in thought, giving Judai a considering look.

"What's up?" Judai asked curiously, tilting his head slightly.

Yusei replied after a few moments, narrowing his eyes, "I blame this on you being a bad influence, but... I was thinking, we could prank them?"

Judai gaped at him in surprise for a moment before grinning widely, eyes sparkling at the idea, "Yusei, you're a genius! Oh my gods, how did I not think of that before? Quick, what do we do- also hey, I'm a fantastic influence! I always knew you had a mischievous side, I'm just bringing it out to show its full potential."

He got a raised eyebrow in response as Yusei hummed, "If that's what you'd like to believe, then... Anyway, here's what I was thinking-"

Judai grinned wider as he listened to the plan Yusei had thought up on the spot; right now, it was absolutely music to his ears, and he couldn't help the slight cackle that escaped at the end of it.

"This is going to _amazing_ ," he said, feeling giddy already about it, "We don't have much time to prepare, so if we want to get the stuff for it we gotta go now."

Yusei nodded with a smile, getting up and tossing Judai his jacket before putting on his own, "We'll take the bike, let's go."

Judai cheered, though he made sure to pull Yusei down for a long kiss before they left. He was quick to respond, pulling Judai closer by grabbing his arms, the keys in his hand pressing into his arm as well but easily ignored.

"Love you," Judai smiled, pulling away a minute later and wrapping the other in a hug instead.

"Love you too," Yusei chuckled, hugging him back for a bit before Judai felt him softly tug him off, "Now come on, we gotta go get prank supplies."

"Yes~" Judai replied happily, rushing over to the door, "Let's go!"

He _knew_ he loved that man for a reason - what an absolute genius he was. Pranks! Genius!

He didn't even care about the exasperated feeling Yubel was sending him in the back of his mind or the grumbles coming from Haou about there being two of him now coming up with bad ideas.

Somehow, someway, Yusei had helped him flip the situation from being something Judai was dreading with a passion and (only slightly now admittedly) stressing about into something he was looking forward to and couldn't come fast enough. Judai _knew_ pulling out that mischievous part of him was a good idea!

Even so, despite how happy Judai was and how much he was mentally praising Yusei at the moment, it didn't stop his usual teasing on the ride there with pokes to the side and breaths on his poor boyfriend's neck. That wasn't something Judai could just give up, after all - it was way too fun to not do it and he found his reactions far too cute, much to Yusei's chagrin.


	68. Beginning of Chaos

_**3/9/19**_

"You finished typing up those hints?" Judai asked, carefully adding the finishing touches to what he was working on.

"Yup, starting to print them now," Yusei replied, the printer next to him whirring to life right after.

"Good, because they're finally starting to get closer," Judai said, rolling up his little project and adding it to the pile of others next to him before starting again, "I'd say we have about ten minutes at this point to set this up and get out of here, and that's assuming that they're all coming together. I'm ninety-nine percent sure that Johan doesn't know I can sense him since I never told him, but you can never be too sure."

"Here, pass me the first one and I'll set it up," Yusei said, gesturing for one of the mini-scrolls with one hand and grabbing the roll of tape with the other. Judai obliged, passing one to him with a shadow so he didn't slow down in making more.

"Y'know, this isn't really a prank now that I think about it," Judai mused, "but then again, an actual prank probably would've been too mean. I've been gone for a long time for them, hell they probably thought I was dead or something."

"That's the point, though," Yusei pointed out, finishing the set-up the second the printer finished its queue and starting to cut those up as needed, "This reminds them of what you're like while not hurting them in the process."

"True!" Judai laughed, tying the last bit of paper and dumping it on top of the pile, "Alright, done! You got the camera set up?"

"That was the first thing I did, remember?" Yusei replied with a smile before handing him a slip of paper, "Here, go do with it whatever it was you were going to do - you never told me what to do with the hints."

Judai happily took it before hiding it under the coffee table with tape holding it up, "I'm just hiding them. In every scroll I wrote that they were hidden in relatively obvious places, but since I don't actually know where I'm going to hide them until we get there I had to keep it generic."

"It works at least," Yusei shrugged, putting away the pile of scrolls and hints into a box and a folder so he could shove them into a bag along with his laptop, "Now come on, do your thing with the camera and materialize the spirits you wanted and let's get out of here."

Judai hummed in agreement, quickly doing his part in hiding the camera by manipulating the shadows around it a bit to obscure it from onlookers; the great part about this was that it didn't block the camera since it was really more illusion than anything else, and because it was more illusion it meant Judai didn't have to be present to keep a hold on it like he would if he were manipulating the actual shadows themselves.

"Alright, time to get this show on the road!" Judai grinned, focusing for a second and reaching out for a few duel spirits before they suddenly appeared in front of him with a cheer.

"So you _can_ do it without a duel disk," Yusei noted, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah, though I wasn't lying when I said the duel disk helps reduce the energy cost significantly. It's just that for these guys it doesn't take much to keep them here in the first place because they're lower in level," Judai replied, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly before turning back to his duel spirits, "You guys know the plan! And remember, if you need to de-materialize, just send your intent through the energy link before you break it."

He got a multitude of nods in response before they all scattered to go get in position to do their part. Quickly he turned around and nodded to Yusei that he was ready, catching the jacket that was once again tossed his way. Why had he taken it off in the first place again?

Oh right, the sleeves kept getting in his way and he didn't want to ruin them. It was a jacket he'd gotten from Yusei, after all, and therefore it was one of his most important possessions.

"You wear the backpack," Yusei said, handing him said backpack, "You're the one without anyone behind them, after all."

Judai put on the backpack quickly before doing a quick glance around the room to double-check that everything was good, "Alright, let's go! Damn we make a great team, look at what we managed to do in twenty minutes."

"That we do," Yusei agreed, following behind Judai as he eagerly ran out the door. Judai waited for him to tape the little note they'd made to the door before they escaped to the parking garage with Yusei's bike in it without locking the door behind them.

As they turned left in the opposite direction of where his friends were coming from, Judai let out a whoop in success, "We left just in time! They just turned the corner that gives sight of the apartment building!"

"We have to go faster then if we want to make sure we have enough time at every place," Yusei mused, "Alright, hold on tight."

"We goin' fast?!" Judai asked excitedly, feeling the adrenaline slowly start to kick in.

"Yup."

That was all the warning he got before they suddenly doubled their speed, and he cheered happily at the adrenaline rush it gave him despite the jerk forward it also caused.

This was already _so_ worth it.


	69. The Hunt Is On

_**3/10/19**_

"I'm gonna kill him."

That earned a multitude of snorts from the group as they stared at the note taped to the door of the apartment, Jun scowling at the forefront as if it had personally slighted him.

Then again, it kind-of had.

 _'Hey guys, come right on in! The door's unlocked._

 _While you're inside, please don't break anything._

 _...Thunder, please don't touch anything at all. I'm holding you guys up to making sure he doesn't._

 _-Judai'_

"Well, let's go in!" Johan cheered, pushing his way past Jun and opening the door, "Clearly he knew we were coming, so we've got nothing holding us back now."

"How'd he figure it out though? We all gathered yesterday afternoon, he had maybe a day to learn about it," Asuka wondered, sighing as she took in the room, "Nothing seems out of the ordinary though..."

"Hey guys, there's a little scroll taped to the wall," Sho pointed out, waving the rest over as he took it off the wall and unraveled it. A bunch of little cut-out Winged Kuribohs fell out when he did, most falling to the floor.

"Yeah, that's definitely Judai's work," Edo said, raising an eyebrow, "Didn't know they made punch-outs of duel monsters, huh... I might need to look into that for the next event I work on."

"Guys, it says there's a hint to where they're hiding somewhere in the room that's relatively obvious and doesn't require moving objects," Sho stated, directing their attention away from the paper Kuribohs.

As one, they all started looking around the room, trying to figure out where the hint could be despite not even knowing what it looks like. Lucky for them though, Ruby was out in spirit form (though this was very normal - it was always weirder if Ruby wasn't out with Johan) and happened to run under the table; she called out to Johan, who pat her on the head and reached under to grab it out.

"Ruby found it! Good job, Ruby," Johan called, reading the little slip of paper out loud, "It says 'This cafe has good coffee of blue.' That's it."

"Blue coffee? That's a bit-" Sho frowned, before getting cut-off by Jun.

"I know what place it is, come on," Jun scowled, spinning back towards the door, "At least he has good taste in coffee."

The rest of the group was quick to follow him out back to the truck they'd taken, seeing as they had six people going everywhere. They didn't bother to question him, considering he seemed to know what Judai was talking about almost immediately, though they couldn't help but question if Judai knew that Jun would know.

How odd...

"Wait, doesn't Judai hate coffee?" Edo asked, remembering one time he'd tried giving Judai coffee while they were still at the academy. He'd nearly done a spit-take before he not-so-secretly dumped it in the trash the first chance he got.

"Oh yeah, he does!" Kenzan blinked, giving off a grin as he remembered another incident as well, "One time I tried suggesting that he drank it so he could actually wake up in the mornings and he gave me one of the most offended looks ever! He looked like I'd just said his deck was trash or something."

"It's not Judai that likes it, obviously," Jun piped up, swerving quickly around someone who was driving too slow for his tastes, "But I know for a fact that one of the people he lives with goes there nearly every day."

"'Jack-ass Atlas', eh?" Johan teased, causing Jun to glare more at the road, "You sure seem to know a lot about someone you dislike so much."

"Shut up."

"Oh my, should I be worried about something?" Asuka pitched in, sharing a wicked grin with Johan while doing so.

"Oh my god, both of you shut up, just no-"

"-Oh ho, Jun, I didn't know. I should invite both of you to my next event so you can have time to yourselves secretly." Edo stated, joining the teasing and earning a shout from the driver.

"Everyone shut up! Goddammit, I don't like that fucker that way at all! He's a cocky bastard!"

Sho continued from there, saying, "You're just mad because he won that duel at-"

"-It was inconclusive-"

"-Even I know he had the duel, and I couldn't see your guys' hands like Sho did," Kenzan pointed out simply.

Everyone yelped as the car suddenly jerked to the side as Jun made a sharp, fast turn off the highway.

"I hate you all. Hate. You. All."

"Okay okay, just drive safely!" They cried, suddenly fearing for their lives. Maybe they shouldn't have poked fun at him while he was driving... Yeah, definitely not the best idea they'd had in a while.


	70. Coffee Lovers

**_3/11/19_**

The group winced the moment they entered the cafe, because sitting in one of the counter seats was Jack Atlas.

Talk about bad timing, they _really_ shouldn't have teased Jun so much on the way there - now they were going to have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

"Welco- Oh hey, these must be the guys they told you about, Jack," the barista behind the counter said, blinking at them before giving them a smile, "Well, if any of you want anything before you wander off again, let me know!"

"Thanks!" Johan replied, giving off a smile of his own.

"Actually, I think I'll get something," Edo said, breaking off from the group so he could order something to-go quickly. The barista followed him eagerly, listing off their most popular items and giving some suggestions.

Meanwhile, the rest of them turned towards Jack, who had spun around in his seat and was studying them with a critical eye.

"Why the hell does Judai know so many pros?" Jack asked them, a twitch forming in his eyebrow, "Or at least, former pros for most of you."

"You trying to say something, Atlas?" Jun retorted, glaring at Jack and getting one in return.

"Maybe, but only about you," Jack replied, looking at him distastefully, "Either way, here - they got lucky I was here at all, so take it. This whole thing is hilarious, you're literally running around like geese; they've really outdone themselves this time." He tossed the little scroll he'd been given about ten minutes early at Jun, hard enough to smack him in the face before he could stop it.

"Fucking bastard."

"That's you, you sore loser."

"You're literally arguing with someone more than twenty years your junior, Jun," Asuka sighed, hitting him lightly on the head, "Knock it off."

Jun grumbled, but backed off anyway to read the scroll with the others. In the meantime, Asuka turned back to Jack to find him giving her a considering look.

"You're Akiza's teacher, right?" Jack asked.

"That's me," she replied.

He gave a nod and turned back to his coffee, saying, "She's been doing better recently, talks about you a lot. You better keep contact with her when she leaves."

Asuka blinked in surprise, not expecting that response but recognizing the subtle threat for what it was - concern for his friend.

"Don't worry, I will. Nice to know she has good friends looking out for her," Asuka smiled, keeping back a laugh at how he tensed in response and practically shoved his cup into his face so he didn't have to reply. With that she turned back to the others, noting that Edo was now sporting a hot drink cup and wearing an impressed look on his face.

"Good coffee?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Really good coffee," he mused, narrowing his eyes down at his cup in thought, "I should find out if they do catering..."

Damn, if Edo was considering it for catering for one of his many events he helped put on, then Asuka really needed to stop by here in the mornings for coffee on the way to class. Clearly she'd been missing out on something good.

"I don't get it," Jun scowled, looking like he was two seconds away from tearing the piece of paper in half.

"'The hint will drop from the heavens for he who calls its name'," Sho mumbled, "Name? What kind of name would a hint have?"

"Man, why'd he have to give us so many riddles, doesn't he hate those too?" Kenzan groaned, rubbing at his temples, "It can't just be Judai who thought all of these up."

That earned a snort from Jack, and they all turned their attention to him at once.

He raised an eyebrow at them, an amused smirk taking up his face, "Duh, that's because it wasn't him. How do you think he's getting everywhere so fast? Yusei's having a fucking blast speeding around the city, and it's not like any of Sector Security will pull him over for doubling the speed limit. Lucky bastard."

"So basically, the only way we're going to find him at this point is to find every single one of these things," Sho despaired.

Johan pat him on the back with a grin, "Aw come on, it's not that bad! Besides, this is Judai we're talkin' about, he'll probably take pity on us if we can't finish it." Ruby purred from where she was perched on his shoulder, and he reached up to pet her, "Well, and if Ruby wants to play so badly, then Winged Kuriboh probably does too, and you know how much he cares about his partner."

Suddenly a happy cry resounded from the ceiling beams, and they all looked up to see Winged Kuriboh erratically flying around their heads. He was quick to drop a little slip of paper from his paws before making his escape through one of the cafe's open windows, though he made sure to wave to Ruby and purr happily before he left.

"...How the hell were we supposed to figure out that we were supposed to call out to Winged Kuriboh without getting lucky?" Jun scowled, staring out the window at the now-empty space.

As they looked at the hint, no one thought much about Ruby running over to look out the window for a bit, hanging on the edge of it. What they couldn't see was the Winged Kuriboh outside, waiting below the window for her.


	71. Duel Spirit Questions

**_3/12/19_**

"Uh, guys?" Sho asked a minute or two later, pointing at the window, "I can... see Ruby."

"Wait what- oh man, I can see 'er too!" Kenzan replied, gaping at the sight of Ruby jumping down from the window, "Man, didn't know Judai could do that from across the city."

"He couldn't before, as far as I know," Asuka said, kneeling down to pet Ruby for a bit before she could wander off back to Johan, "Then again, there's a lot of things we probably don't know he's capable of doing. He very well could've been capable of this before he disappeared, too."

"Up ya go, Ruby," Johan smiled, holding out an arm for her to climb up so she could rest on his shoulders again, "Well, either way we should probably get a move on-"

"Wait," Jack interrupted, giving them an unreadable stare, "How many of you can see duel spirits? Thought that was supposed to be rare."

"Well, Sho and Asuka can't see them, and Kenzan can sense when they're there, but besides that the rest of us here can see and hear them just fine," Edo explained, sipping at his coffee.

"God I hope the idiot doesn't do that to mine, then he'll _really_ be dead when I get my hands on him," Jun muttered, practically daring his Ojamas to come out and make him more annoyed than he already was.

"Apparently Judai helped Yusei to be able to see them," Jack explained, "Didn't say much besides that he had a problem preventing him from being able to when he should've and helped him fix it. Other than those two and another person, though, I've never met anyone else that could see them."

"Really? Huh, that's odd," Johan replied, looking up thoughtfully, "Based on everything I've observed throughout the years, there's been a significant increase in people that can see them. Maybe I need to run a scan on this city... Wasn't there something about psychic dueli-"

"Alright, let's go before we lose him completely to duel spirit la-la land," Jun said, pushing Johan out the door in front of him, "You can think about it later dumbass, for now we've got an idiot to find and yell at."

"Sorry, sorry - you know I love my work and all," Johan replied sheepishly, almost tripping over the door frame.

"Nice meeting you officially, Atlas. We'll probably be seeing you again soon, so until then," Edo said, waving as they all exited out the door. Suddenly he stopped just before the door closed, poking his head back in for a moment and asking, "You wouldn't happen to know if this place does catering, would you?"

Jack smirked at the question, giving him a short nod, "They do. I think we're going to get along just fine, Phoenix."

"Anyone that can annoy Jun with their mere presence is a friend in my book," he replied with a grin, sending him another wave before retreating again, "Thanks, see ya 'round!"

Once they were gone, Jack turned to look at the ceiling again where Winged Kuriboh waved at him with the paw not holding a camera; a few moments later the fluff-ball was retreating out the window. He snorted and drank the rest of his coffee before ordering another one to-go, pulling out his phone so he could text Crow and figure out what to do for the rest of the day.

There was no way he was going back to that apartment until at least ten o'clock, after all, not with imminent chaos approaching like that. Crow would have to thank him later for being nice enough to warn him about it; maybe they could duel or something, they hadn't done that in a while and Crow had been talking about maybe trying to go pro officially recently, so it'd be good practice.

Nodding to himself, he took his drink and strolled out the door, finally getting a text back from Crow that he was almost done with his last house-run for the day - something about a broken pipe or whatever. Either way, at least he had something to do now for the rest of the day.


	72. The Hunt Continues

_**3/13/19**_

Sho, for once, was right next to Jun as they stared dispassionately up at the tree that had a little piece of paper tacked to the underside of a branch at the highest point of it.

"Why? Why does he do this to us?" Sho muttered, slowly starting to get more irritated as this was the fifth place they'd been so far.

"Are you finally understanding what an idiot he is?" Jun asked, not bothering to turn to look at him while they both watched Johan cheerfully send Ruby climbing up the tree to get the hint.

"I already knew that," Sho replied, fiddling with his glasses, "But this is terrifying. He's got a smart person wrapped around his fingers, if we're right about them being together, so anything like this that he decides to pull will forever be ten times worse than before."

At this Jun finally turned his head, wearing a look of dawning horror, "Oh god, you're right. And unlike Kenzan and Johan, we actually live in this city with them."

Both of them grimaced and shared equal looks of despair, not noticing the exasperated looks Edo and Asuka were giving them.

"Don't they realize we live here too...?" Asuka asked, rolling her eyes at their moodiness.

"You know how they are, though I'm surprised it's taken this long for Sho to start being like this," Edo replied amusedly.

"A'ight, ready Ruby? Jump!" Johan called, catching the duel monster as she jumped down from the tree with a slightly ripped hint in her mouth. He pet her with a smile in thanks before taking the note and passing it to Kenzan to read while he helped Ruby re-settle on his shoulders.

"Come on you guys, I'm sure it won't be too much longer!" Kenzan yelled, gesturing for everyone to gather around. Sho and Jun did it with a grumble while everyone else laughed slightly at their plight.

* * *

"Oh joy, more of you," Sho mumbled, suddenly wanting to bash his head into the wall as they got to the tenth place. At this point it was starting to get late into the afternoon, and it was almost time for the sun to start setting.

The three Hero Kids in front of them laughed in response, flying easily around each other in the air before one tossed a scroll to Asuka.

"The only thing it says is 'Three brothers will receive the hint.'"

"Three brothers, huh? Wait, maybe the Ojamas?" Kenzan wondered, everyone turning to stare at Jun in response.

"Goddammit, I just _knew_ he would find a way to make this worse," Jun scowled, calling out to his three duel spirits reluctantly. With a pop they all suddenly appeared, giving out similar cheers of 'Boss!' and crying. Jun's eye started twitching as he explained, "Just go over to the fucking Hero Kids and do whatever the hell it is you have to do so we can move on."

"On it Boss!"

"You can count on us Boss!"

"We got it Boss!"

"Just go already, geez!" Jun yelled, though everyone present could see how his eyes softened ever-so-slightly at the way the three Ojamas saluted him dutifully. Not like any of them would call him out on it though, since the only one that could do that without getting away unscathed was Judai.

Hilariously enough, not only did they get the hint, but now the Ojama brothers were materialized as well. Luckily for everyone there, they didn't smell like they thought they would and instead had a flowery scent for whatever reason.

"Well, at least now we know how Ruby was brought here," Edo said, watching as the Hero Kids flew off behind a nearby building and made their escape, "If a spirit makes contact with one of Judai's materialized monsters, then he can materialize them as well. Winged Kuriboh must've not left the cafe like we thought he had."

"That's Judai for you, though the amount of duel energy required to keep them all here for so long must be exhausting," Johan added, frowning in thought, "I can only materialize Ruby without a duel disk because Judai helped me out with it the... last time I saw him. But this many? Spanning across the entire city?"

"None of us here have the knowledge you do about duel energy, remember?" Kenzan reminded him with a smile, patting him on the shoulder, "You can nerd out with Judai when we find him, but until then we gotta keep goin'."

"Ah, right, sorry again. Habit."

* * *

"Please, please tell me this is the last one," Sho begged, giving the scroll a hopeful look, "This is the fourteenth one and it's almost nighttime."

"'Which flower doesn't belong?' is what it asks," Johan said, all but ignoring Sho. To be honest though, everyone was starting to get tired of this and were really just wanting it to be over with, except for Johan of course, who was still in very high spirits because he'd gotten to have Ruby out and solid all day.

The group gazed out over the little flower field, taking in the numerous colors as they waved slightly in the evening breeze.

"At least it's a pretty place," Asuka mumbled, thinking about how it might be a good place to come relax and read if she ever felt like it. It was still a park, after, but this particular section was pretty empty because it took a bit of walking to get to.

"Ah... wait, I remember now!" Sho said, understanding lighting up his face as he made his way over to a different section of flowers, "Ah ha! I was right, it's one of big bro's duel monsters! Dandylion, right?"

Said duel monster popped its head up out of the flowers with a happy cry, waving its petals around and picking up some balls of fluff in the process. Dandylion passed Sho the little hint with one of its leaves before it cut the energy connection and became a spirit again to let Judai know they'd done their part.

"Oh thank goodness," Sho sighed happily, reading the hint, "It says to go back to the beginning, in other words the apartment."

The whole group let out sighs of relief, ready to finally see their lost friend again. Johan just laughed amusedly at their apparent misery, sharing a grin with Ruby as they all made their way back to the apartment.


	73. Crunch Time Beforehand

_**3/14/19**_

"Ah, Dandylion just broke the connection," Judai hummed, quickly washing out a huge amount of rice in a pot before filling it with water and shoving it into the rice cooker, "Means we've got roughly thirty minutes or so to get this mostly done - that was a smart idea to make the last place on the complete opposite side of the city."

Yusei hummed as well in acknowledgement, relegated once again to vegetable-chopping duty as he cut them them much faster and cleanly than he had the first time they'd cooked together, "We're a good team."

"That we are," Judai grinned, whisking together a few things after leaving a pot of water to start boiling on the stove, "Pass the carrots, please." He pecked Yusei on the cheek in thanks when he leaned over to dump the carrots on his cutting mat, getting a small smile as his reward.

After a few minutes, they both had finished with their respective duties and were now just waiting for the water to boil, which was going to take up most of their waiting time. Judai glanced over at Yusei, who had tilted his head towards him with a questioning look about what to do next.

"Well, I'd say we have time for a bit of fun," Judai said, feeling one of his 'foxy' grins start to take over his face, as Yusei liked to call it.

Yusei raised his eyebrows at him with an exasperated look, replying, "Really? Not that I'm against it obviously, but..."

In response Judai moved closer, gently pushing him back to the table, "It's not much different from the time the twins came over, is it? Except this time it's just until the water finishes doing its thing so we can go back to cooking and being good hosts." He grinned as Yusei failed to come up with a response to that, considering he himself had been the one to suggest it at that time, resigning himself to a shrug of defeat.

"True," Yusei sighed, "But can we at least go to the couch?"

Judai laughed, pulling Yusei back with him and out of the kitchen, "Whatever you want, Yusei - the couch is comfier anyway." This time though, when they got to the couch, Judai was quick to sit down first and pull Yusei down into _his_ lap for once.

Yusei's face flushed pink as he was pulled down, knees falling on either side of Judai, "Ah- Judai-"

"So this is how you always get to feel," Judai teased, grabbing his waist and easily pulling him closer, "We'll need to do this more later for sure."

"This doesn't work as well though," Yusei muttered, face reddening more as he supported himself on the back of the couch with his arms and looked down at Judai, "I'm taller than you by a lot."

"Who cares, all I care about is that you're in my lap and looking adorable as hell," Judai replied, leaning back against the back of the couch so that Yusei didn't have to lean down so much.

With that, he reached up and brushed some strands of Yusei's hair away from his face so he could see it in its entirety before he pulled him down gently for a kiss. Slowly it got more heated, Judai tilting Yusei's head with a hand on the back of it so he could deepen the kiss.

After a bit Judai felt Yusei shift so that he could place his hands on his shoulders as support instead, causing him to lean even more into Judai as they sunk lower into the couch and slightly to the side. Eventually they parted, breathing softly as they started to lean back in for more.

And then it was ruined by a bunch of duel monsters flying in through the window, laughing loudly about the little scavenger hunt they'd been helping out on.

"Ah well, it _was_ just a little teaser after all," Judai sighed with a smile, sharing a look with Yusei before they both laughed and rolled up and off the couch. He turned to the little group of duel monsters, clapping to get their attention and asking, "I'm assuming it all went well? You guys got the cameras and everything?"

"Yup!" One of the Hero Kids cheered, and one-by-one each duel monster passed their cameras to Yusei so he could start saving the videos off of them onto his laptop for safe keeping.

"That was fun! We should do more stuff like this, Judai!" The other two Hero Kids laughed, Winged Kuriboh joining in in agreement as he flew over and settled on Judai's head.

"Yeah, I'll try to think of somethin' for you guys to do in the future," Judai replied, entertaining them a bit more as they rambled about the group before they all returned to spirit form and went back into the spirit realm. When he glanced over into the kitchen, he could see the water steaming and just starting to boil.

He went over to Yusei and gave him another quick peck on the lips, saying, "I'm gonna go put everything together, you can just keep workin' on this before they get here if you want."

"If you're sure," Yusei responded, smiling when Judai simply gave him a grin and a nod that he was.

After all, it's not like Judai couldn't multi-task. He was quite good at it, actually, and right now they needed to be lightning fast at everything they needed to get done before his friends got there.

That break had put him in an even better mood too, which helped a lot.


	74. Reunion

_**3/15/19**_

A knock on the door resounded throughout the house, cutting loud and clear through the clattering Judai was making in the kitchen. With a sigh of relief that he'd finished in time, he took a look at the kitchen table after putting the last used pan in the sink to deal with later - platters of food lined it, and all finished within the hour or so he'd had to make it.

Judai nodded to himself in satisfaction, looking to Yusei as another knock hit at the door. He got an encouraging smile in response as he watched him close his laptop, the cameras already having been secluded away in their room five minutes ago.

It didn't really help though that Judai was starting to stress again now that there was no more waiting or running to be done; he turned his eyes towards the door warily, suddenly not entirely sure that he was ready for this.

Oh by the gods and stars above he was definitely not ready for this confrontation, what was he thinking? He was going to open that door and just get absolutely mauled and-

Clearly Yusei realized that his nerves were starting to come back as yet another impatient knock rang out, because he was quick to walk over and turn Judai's face back to look at him with a gentle hand.

"Judai, look at me," Yusei said, and Judai couldn't do anything other than that anyway, "It's going to be fine, okay? I promised I'd be right here next to you the entire time." He felt the other grab his hands and squeeze them tightly in reassurance, which helped anchor him back into reality.

"Yeah, yeah you're right," Judai breathed, mentally psyching himself up to be able to open that door, "I- I can do this."

"You can do this," Yusei echoed, giving him a smile that Judai found himself able to return as he tried to latch onto the calm aura the other seemed like he was exuding.

Judai took a deep breath before letting go of Yusei's hands, looking back to the door with a determined look. It was now or never, and he knew this was something he needed to do, both for himself and for his friends. They deserved this much, at least.

Obviously he would never regret time-jumping to be with Yusei, and if he had to do it all over again he would. Nothing and no one could have ever changed the decision he made and that was something he'd stand by for life; this was just one aspect he'd have to deal with in sticking by it.

Winged Kuriboh chose that moment to reappear, having left earlier so that Judai could focus all his attention on cooking. He nudged Judai's face with a paw, giving him an encouraging cry before settling on his shoulder for once instead of his head.

With that, Judai walked over, and with one final, hesitant look at Yusei, who'd stopped just a bit behind and to the side of him out of sight of the door, opened the door.

"...Hey," Judai said, a nervous grin taking up his face as he made sure the door opened all the way. He took in the sight of his tired friends, everyone staring at him with wide eyes as if they couldn't really believe it was him even after all this, and felt something tug at his heart. Guilt?

Sho was the first one to break only a few moments later, tears springing to his eyes as he tackled Judai into a hug, "Big bro! It's really y-you-"

Judai felt his breath get slammed out of him and he couldn't help the laugh that sprung out of him in response, "I'm not sure I really qualify as a 'big brother' anymore Sho-"

"It's definitely him, did you hear that laugh? Oh god I forgot how annoying it was," Jun groaned, bringing a hand up to his face. He couldn't hide his smile from anyone that was there, though, and soon enough Judai felt himself getting squished in the middle of a huge group hug.

"So you finally decided to show up again, eh?" Johan grinned, working with Kenzan to wrap Judai in a headlock and an inescapable noogie, "Kept us waiting quite a while, best friend."

"Yeah, you're gonna have to work extra hard to make up for this one," Kenzan added, laughing as well with a smile on his face.

"Extra hard indeed," Edo hummed, pulling back early from the group hug, which really didn't help much in the end because Judai was still trapped where he was between everyone else, "Perhaps I should force you to come to some of my events... it'd be good publicity, after all."

"We all missed you, Judai," Asuka smiled, though Judai could see the malicious edge to it and internally shuddered; he was definitely going to get a lecture from her... and oh no, she was a _teacher_ now, which meant it was going to be even _worse_.

"Missed you guys t- ow, ow, I'm sorry for disappearing like that, please, have mercy on me," Judai replied, wincing as Johan's smile gained an edge scarily similar to Asuka's and his knuckles dug even harder into his head before letting him go. "I'll explain what happened guys, but in the meantime I made you food?" Judai continued, rubbing his head and deciding to pull out the puppy eyes - according to Yubel and, begrudgingly, Haou, they were a very deadly weapon when he wielded them, and hell if he wasn't going to take advantage of that right now.

"We'll take your bribe, but don't think that look'll work on me mister," Johan laughed, poking Judai in the forehead, "I've faced down the watery eyes of a Maiden in Love duel spirit and not fallen for it."

"The only one you'll fall for is Ruby," Sho snorted, readjusting his glasses which had fogged up a little and been knocked askew when he hugged Judai.

"I don't know about you guys, but I heard food and after the day we've had I need it," Kenzan said, roughly patting Judai on the back and causing him to lose his balance slightly for a second.

Judai grinned at that, thinking about the footage they'd gotten from the day before he perked up in remembrance and said, "Ah, guys, before that... you gotta meet someone." He waved over to the side, gesturing for Yusei to come over and stand next to him, "This is Yusei, Yusei, these are uh... about half my friends, actually."

"Ah yes, this is the poor guy who got stuck with you," Edo said without a single pause of hesistance, "Yusei Fudo, nice to meet you."

"O-oi, Edo-" Judai stuttered, not expecting them to already have figured out that they were together. He felt his face warm up in embarrassment alongside Yusei's when everyone else in the group grinned knowingly, continuing, "Aw come on, all of you know? How'd you figure it out?"

"It's so blatantly obvious even an idiot like you could've figure it out if the videos we saw were put in front of you," Jun stated, a smirk forming on his face while his eyes filled with mirth, "Do you even know half the things people post about you on the internet?"

"I found out that there's an entire guild dedicated to you guys in that game you two play and won that tournament in," Sho added, though the look he was sporting showed that he was still in slight disbelief himself about that tidbit of information.

Judai hadn't even known that game had guilds in it... since when had it had guilds?! What did guilds even do for you with a game like Duel Monsters? He'd have to look into it later with Yusei, because if they gave any sort of item or card rewards then they'd clearly been missing out on something.

Asuka added in with an amused smile, "You guys are a popular enough topic that I heard people talking about you two during breaks between classes."

"...Well, at least I was right about not having to publicly announce it," Yusei sighed, and Judai had to give him props for being able to adapt to the situation so quickly, "I did say after that tournament that people would be able to figure it out on their own, didn't I?"

"You did," Judai confirmed, cursing the fact that his face was probably still red, "Anyways, uh... you can all tell him your names in a bit, but for now, food?"

"Finally!" Kenzan cheered, Johan joining him with an excited whoop as well.

As a group they all moved out of the entryway and towards the kitchen, though everyone laughed as they all noticed at the same time that Ruby and Winged Kuriboh had had their own reunion, Judai having made sure to materialize Winged Kuriboh again so that they could run around and play.

Sharing a glance with Yusei, Judai finally realized what that tug in his chest was - it wasn't guilt, it was joy and relief.

Lucky for him, only Yusei saw him quickly wipe at his eyes before he was grinning widely once again.


	75. Judai The Cook

_**3/16/19**_

"Holy shit dude, this is amazing," Kenzan said, swallowing his food and staring down at it in wonder, "You two made this?"

"Ah... yeah-" Judai replied, before getting cut-off by Yusei.

"All I did was chop up stuff, Judai did all the work," Yusei admitted, sending Judai a confused eyebrow when he looked to the side nervously.

"No way," Sho said, a severe look of disbelief crossing his face as he also stared at the food in wonder, "There's _no way_ it was Judai that made this. He nearly burned down the dorms the few times he tried to cook!"

"Oh god, I remember that," Jun added, a look of horror appearing on his face at the memory, "He somehow made a pot of water explode trying to boil it, and because the kitchen is on the bottom floor and shares a wall with my room, when the wall blew up, the fire _spread into my room_."

"He did what now?" Edo asked confusedly, "Was I ever there when this stuff happened? The main things that come to mind for me from when I was there was Judai hating coffee and somehow flooding the... _Obelisk_ dorm's main hall."

Judai, luckily, had already explained most of what'd happened in his time to Yusei, or else he probably wouldn't have understood the emphasis placed on Obelisk - Judai'd flooded the Society of Light's main hall, not the Obelisk blue's.

"To be fair I still hate coffee unless it's made a certain way, and that flooding incident was on purpose," Judai replied, sticking a forkful of food in his mouth so he didn't have to talk more about it. From the curious look Yusei was giving him though, he'd be spilling his guts about all his misadventures once they were alone once again.

Funny how that worked - Judai could wear a mask for the entire world that was nearly impenetrable, but when it came to Yusei it was like those walls never existed in the first place. He'd tell him anything and everything at this point, especially now that he'd managed to tell him about his past and been accepted despite all of it.

"It was mostly in the first year, we always made sure to keep him occupied after the first few incidents so that he didn't get bored," Asuka admitted, shooting Judai an apologetic look, "After all, he managed to find the weirdest things when he did."

"Johan, you were a literal life-saver when you came to the academy," Sho said with a grin, turning to look at him, "You two got along like a house on fire and were always busy dueling or whatever, but because you were always together and _you_ were a responsible human being we finally were able to stop worrying about Judai doing something utterly insane."

Johan laughed, giving off a grin, "Y'know, now that you mention it I vaguely remember him coming up with some weird ideas that I shot down. I never really thought much about it though considering most of the time we were too busy dueling or hangin' out with our duel spirits."

"Gee, thanks you guys," Judai muttered, pouting around the fork in his mouth while everyone else laughed at his expense.

"Anyway, back to the original question - you, the idiot who blew up my dorm room with a pot of boiling water, really managed to cook?" Jun asked, giving him an incredulous look.

"I did," Judai replied, looking back to the side again sheepishly at being reminded again about that incident, "Turns out there's a lot of people out there that simply won't let you leave their house without knowing the basics of cooking?"

"...You were forced into learning?" Kenzan asked, raising an eyebrow. Now everyone was staring at Judai incredulously, not quite believing what they were hearing.

"There was this one family that I stayed with early on that figured out I knew nothing about cooking, and in their words, 'Would not let such an aspiring, young man waste away by accidentally starving while he traveled.' They made me stay for an entire week, and during that week I learned pretty much all the basics and a lot of recipes that actually helped a lot later on," Judai explained, smiling fondly at the memory of the couple and their two kids who happily ate up all the food that was made, regardless of how terrible it was in the beginning. They'd been really kind, and even now he still couldn't believe his luck at having met them.

"That's... wow, you must've met a lot of really nice people while you were traveling," Sho said, staring at him wide-eyed.

"I'm just wondering how in the world they managed to beat such good cooking skills into him in a week," Asuka muttered, earning a laugh from the rest of the group.

"Hey, I learned a lot from a bunch of people over the years, I was just barely passable when that family let me go," Judai responded before giving everyone a pointed look, "Now, less talking, more eating. _Please_."

To his relief they did, and quite happily at that. Amusingly, he also noticed that Yusei had already finished his plate while he'd been listening and was scooping up a small pile of seconds to nibble on later.

"I will say though," Edo mused after a few minutes, giving Judai a smile, "This food is really good, and if you're ever up for it I'll pay you to cook for some events of mine. Know any fancy stuff? If you do then you could do some special orders too, those pay more because of the skill required."

Judai blinked at him in surprise, not expecting that of all things, but he felt oddly touched at... well, being wanted for something by a friend. "Depends what you mean by fancy stuff, I've been all over the place and learned a bunch of different things," he replied, tilting his head in interest, "Though to be honest I didn't really expect my cooking to be _that_ good..."

"I told you that you spoiled me with your cooking for a reason, Judai," Yusei pointed out, amusement glinting in his eyes.

"Oh man, that's right, you get to _live_ with this stuff," Johan realized, sending Yusei a smile as he asked, "Has eating this everyday ruined all other foods for you or what?"

"Definitely."

"Man, I can't tell if that's a good thing or not."

"It definitely beats eating instant ramen for every meal of the day."

"No way, really?"

And with that Judai tuned out their conversation, glad that those two were getting along well and that Yusei was being included easily. He turned back to Edo, asking, "Anyway, what kind of fancy stuff did you mean?"

"Things like layered cakes, pastries with fancy decorations, fancy little chocolates and specialty coffees," Edo replied, "I arrange a lot of events, ranging from parties for the rich to huge dueling tournaments. Most of the time they each have something special that's served, whether it's little macaroons for a large party, a tiered cake for a wedding or a special prize for tournament winners; think along those lines for what would be fitting."

"Mostly baking stuff, huh?," Judai mused, looking up in thought, "I can do a lot of fancy stuff with chocolate, and I've had to make specialty coffees so many times it's been burned into my brain. Haven't actually tried my hand at cakes yet, but I can make things like crepes and macaroons, those are easy."

"Easy, he says," Edo laughed, "Well, tell me your email so I can tell you if I ever have something available. If it's not up your alley just let me know, but if you can do it, you've got yourself some extra cash."

"Sounds good to me," Judai replied, giving him a grateful smile. It may have been unexpected, but it was definitely an appreciated gesture - besides, he had been planning on finding some sort of side-job soon anyways, so this worked out well.

Oh man, now he could brag to Jack about how he'd had a job fall right into his lap when the other still couldn't get one. It may be a little mean, but...

Well, Haou was humming rather gleefully at the thought - maybe Judai shouldn't mention it after all.


	76. Subversion Tactics

**_3/17/19_**

Judai knew he couldn't avoid explaining any longer as the conversations around him started dwindling down, everyone's attention back on him as the food was finished.

"So... in case it wasn't obvious, I time-traveled," he started, not sure how much he actually wanted to tell them. It... well, it was a very selfish reason for time-traveling, but Yugi'd been a huge support for going through with it, and being here with Yusei now had made it entirely worth it in the end and made _him_ feel significantly better about being selfish for once.

But even then, he knew it would sound... bad to them. They deserved to hear about how Yugi could see red strings of fate and that he'd time-jumped for legitimate reasons that made both him and Yusei happy, but he didn't _want_ to tell them because he knew it would sound entirely ridiculous to them. That, and it would lead to questions about what he was doing hanging out with the original King of Games anyway, which he was actually okay with talking about considering it was mostly research they were doing together and-

 _Wait._ That was it!

He hurriedly glanced at Yusei, hoping the other would realize what he was doing and show some sort of approval as he continued saying, "It was entirely voluntary, first of all, so don't think that it was an accident or anything - I was working with Yugi Moto on a bunch of spirit realm research and we knew that it was a possibility due to the nature of the magic we were studying."

Yusei's eyes lit up in understanding, and despite the flicker of conflict that passed through them afterwards he eventually softened his look and gave Judai a small nod of approval.

Thank the _gods_ Yusei was okay with this - he may not entirely understand why he didn't want to tell the whole truth to them, but Judai could tell that the other would be okay with it so long as he didn't lie. He knew Yusei appreciated honesty, after all, and it's not like Judai wanted to lie to his friends anyway; omitting part of the truth, though, and letting them fill in the blanks?

That was fair game. He could work with this.

"To be honest, once I'd heard you were listed as being twenty-two the possibility of time-travel did pop into my mind," Asuka admitted, "It's definitely something I could see you somehow managing to accomplish."

"Scratch that, I'm more interested in how he was doing magic research with the King of Games," Johan said excitely, eyes sparkling in curiosity, "You guys must've figured out a ton of new stuff! Wait, is that why you were able to teach me how to materialize Ruby for short periods of time?"

"Yeah, that was part of what we figured out," Judai replied, grinning as he thought about all the stuff he and Yugi had learned about magic, Judai's powers, and the spirit dimensions as a whole, "We managed to find out a lot of new aspects of magic and duel energy that we hadn't before. It helped that we accidentally learned stuff along the way that were a huge help to our research, like when I accidentally figured out that I could see duel energy if channeled my powers a certain way."

"You can see duel energy?!" Johan grinned, nearly knocking over his chair with how fast he stood up, "That's so cool dude, do you know how useful that is?! I've been going around the world monitoring duel energy levels and collecting data on everything and anything about it for years now, I can only imagine how much being able to actually _see_ it would help supplement the data!"

"Oh no, not again," Jun groaned, "How do you manage to bring up your work somehow in every conversation you're in?"

"It really is an art form, huh?" Sho wondered, Kenzan nodding in agreement with him.

"You've got data on duel energy from around the world?" Yusei asked, suddenly sitting up in his chair as his eyes sparked in interest, "What kinds are we talking about here? I work with momentum every day and-"

Johan was quick to interrupt him, giving Yusei a wide-eyed look, "Momentum? I haven't been able to study that stuff much beyond 'it happens when energy spins' because most of the research is really well hidden and I haven't gotten any of the research circles to share what they know with me. You work with that stuff every day?"

"I'm currently working on getting the original reactor for the city up and working again, but safely this time. Momentum is what powers the entire city, though I'm not surprised you couldn't find out much about it considering it was deemed too dangerous for most people to know - it's pretty damn destructive if mishandled even the slightest bit," Yusei replied.

Judai frowned at the memory of how utterly dense the duel energy had been at the reactor when they went there, saying, "Even looking past the Zero Reverse event and everything that happened as a result, that damn facility has so much duel energy still floating around unchecked I nearly thought I was walking into a war zone for a few seconds when Yusei brought me there. Semi-sentient, floating duel energy that _still_ hadn't dispersed - it was nearly the same kind of atmosphere."

"A war zone? How much duel energy are we talking here?" Johan asked, "I've got a bunch of custom duel energy readers that I could bring there and we could look to see what they pick up."

"Custom, huh?" Yusei mused, bringing a hand up to his chin in thought, "I've got a couple of my own but they mostly just tell me about movement and production output, since that's the main focus when it comes to momentum."

"Well, I think we've lost them guys," Edo said, turning to the others, "I never thought the day would come that I'd say this, but we've lost Judai to a nerd-out session."

"I guess since it's about duel energy and magic, it doesn't really count?" Sho replied with a smile, "That's a lot more interesting than regular science, especially to a duelist."

Judai cheered internally at that, being able to tune into both conversations rather easily - at least Sho understood why this stuff was so interesting to him. That, and knowing about duel energy was actually really important for being able to control his powers, even if he didn't realize that was necessarily an aspect of it at first.

Besides, if something could be done about that reactor facility, then that was even better. Judai really didn't like it - the amount of duel energy there, like he'd said, reminded him of a war zone and just grated on his danger sense.

And hey! He'd successfully managed to subvert the topic without much hassle, and they weren't asking any more questions about his time-traveling, at least for now, so all-in-all this was a major success. Judai's luck was really pulling through for him right now.


	77. Crowded Room

**_3/18/19_**

"...Shit, you're all still here," Jack stated, staring deadpan from his position at the door at the scene in the living room.

"No duh we're all still here," Jun retorted shooting him a glare after moving a piece on the game board, "Playing this stupid game and that stupid game and _all_ the _stupid games_."

"Hey man, it's not our fault you keep losing," Judai said, humming happily as he moved his own piece and took over a solid chunk of Jun's territories with a single, well-placed move.

"You do keep getting baited easily," Asuka added, gesturing to the area that Judai had taken to make her point clear. She gave a satisfied grin at the grumble Jun made in response, though he kept playing at least.

"You keep making it too easy to take resources from you, no matter what game it is," Sho admitted as well, pushing up his glasses a bit as he looked down at his cards, "Even if we can't beat Judai, at least we haven't gotten dead last every single time."

"It's rather impressive, actually," Kenzan chuckled, though he was quick to dodge the hand that came for him afterwards.

Jack and Crow made their way inside while Jun made his irritation clear, dropping their stuff off to the side before making their way to the other group that was gathered around the desk.

"Ah, I told you we'd be meeting again soon, Atlas," Edo said, waving them over with a smile, "Don't mind these two, they're busy talking science and stuff. As for you, I don't believe we've met before? I'm Edo Phoenix."

"Crow Hogan, nice to meet you," Crow replied with a grin, shaking the hand that was offered to him, "I see Yusei found a kindred spirit in someone."

"Yes, well, they both work with duel energy apparently and they've literally been in their own world for hours," Edo explained, gesturing to Yusei and Johan who had two laptops and a couple holo-tablets surrounding them, "Judai was with them for a while there before he got forcibly dragged away to catch up with everyone else." He shrugged before continuing, "I'm here because I find it interesting stuff to learn about, you can never know too much after all."

"Don't let him fool you, he's been giving input about the business side of this stuff the whole time," Johan grinned, turning around suddenly, "The name's Johan Andersen, let's get along, yeah?"

Yusei blinked in confusion before finally noticing that there were two other people there now, "Oh, Jack, Crow - welcome back."

"Now you notice?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow with a teasing grin. After all, it was a very common occurrence to have to call out Yusei's name a couple times to get his attention if he was fully focused on his work - it's like the outside world just stopped existing for him.

Didn't stop them from teasing him about it, though.

"Yusei, how could you?" Crow cried, bring a hand up to his forehead as if he were in pain, "I thought we were brothers, and yet you forgot about us..."

Yusei gave them an exasperated look, shaking his head slightly with a sigh, "Guys..."

"Don't worry, we can continue this later," Johan said, looking back at Yusei after getting out a short laugh from Crow's antics, "The facility won't be going anywhere, after all, and I've been planning to move back to the city for a while now anyways. I should be all settled in in a couple weeks or so, and then I'll actually have the equipment we need to figure out stuff."

"I'll help you guys out with it too, so if you need anything don't be afraid to call," Edo added.

"Alright, thanks you two. I'll tell Judai about it later," Yusei replied, getting to work closing all the programs they'd opened while Johan powered down some of his little devices he'd happened to have on him at the time.

"The reactor facility?" Crow questioned, staring curiously at them, "What's going on there?"

"Didn't you and Judai go there for something before?" Jack frowned, thinking back to the first few weeks that Judai was there - Yusei had vaguely mentioned it, and at the time it had just seemed like he was showing him his project, but were they there for a different reason?

"I'll tell you guys about it later, for now though..." Yusei replied, trailing off as he glanced over at the other group, "for now I think we need to go save those guys from their doom."

And he was very right about that, because Jun looked to be about two seconds away from simply tearing up the cards in his hand. Asuka was looking on in clear amusement as Kenzan and Sho struggled to reign in their laughter so that they didn't die to Jun's wrath, while Judai just kept on playing and seemingly was able to ignore how pissed he was making his rival by constantly winning.

"Yeah, I think it's about time for us to go," Edo said, sighing before turning to Johan, "You take Sho and Kenzan, Asuka and I will handle Jun."

"At least Judai de-materialized the Ojamas soon after we got here," Johan noted, "Or he would've flipped out hours ago."


	78. Finally Able To Relax

**_3/19/19_**

Judai's phone weighed heavily in his pocket as he watched the door close behind his friends, filled with new contact information and new group chats. It felt like a weight had been lifted from his heart, knowing that they were all still wanting to be friends and didn't hate him.

Sure, he fully expected to get a talking-to once they managed to get him alone and _not_ attached to Yusei's side like a leech, but that was besides the point - they still cared about him, even if he'd jumped twenty years ahead and was now significantly younger than them.

Everyone retired to their rooms, tossing out some quick 'goodnight's before escaping behind their doors. Almost immediately Judai dragged Yusei down onto the bed, burying his head into his chest with a deep sigh.

"I did it," Judai mumbled, and now that he could finally relax he was realizing just how tense he'd been for the last however many hours they'd been there; he could feel himself shaking slightly too, which meant he'd had some sort of adrenaline running through him to this point. He hadn't even noticed until just now, but now that he had he felt the need to latch onto Yusei lest it get worse.

"You did," Yusei replied, kissing him softly on the forehead and running a hand gently through his hair. He rested his head lightly on top of his afterwards, nose digging into his hair.

They stayed quiet for a bit, though Yusei did pull him down so they were lying on the bed instead of sitting on it, holding him close like he was a stuffed animal or something again - it did wonders for helping Judai calm down and relax. He took a deep breath as he felt himself finally stop shaking a minute or two later, wriggling his way up a bit out of Yusei's grasp so he could look at him in the eyes.

"Thanks," Judai said, a small smile forming on his face, "And also thanks for letting me give the reasoning I did."

"I figured you didn't want to tell them about the... specific circumstances," Yusei explained, lips twitching into a smile as he loosened his grip so he could pull back Judai's hair from his face, "especially considering you barely told me in the first place."

"Even I have to admit it sounds ridiculous, but with all the stuff we've gone through, we both know it's a very real possibility - unlike us, they probably would've never believed it, let alone entertained the thought," Judai replied, laughing a bit at the thought, "I figured this was a better way of explaining it."

"You did a good job," Yusei said, cupping his face lightly. Judai felt his breath catch as they stared at each other, face warming as he became hyper-aware of the hand on his face and the thumb latched under his chin; it pushed his chin up lightly as he was drawn into a soft kiss, eyes closing as they threaded their fingers together.

Judai could feel his heart fluttering in his chest as it became long and drawn-out, and when they parted he was only barely able to open his eyes back up, feeling slightly like he was on cloud-nine.

"Love you," he breathed, tightening his grip on the other's hand for a moment in emphasis.

"Love you too," Yusei murmured back, staring at him for a few seconds longer before smiling and saying, "Come on, let's go change so we can go to sleep."

Judai hummed in agreement, though he hugged Yusei closer before he could move, "In a minute."

"Okay, but only a minute," Yusei replied, grinning at him, "Surely you don't want to sleep in those clothes, you've been in them all day."

"More like I don't wanna try sleeping with you wearing those stupid knee-pads," Judai pouted, causing Yusei to laugh softly.

This was a nice way to end an emotionally taxing day, at the very least - actually scratch that, it'd been an emotionally taxing couple of weeks. Judai'd been worrying since the time Akiza came over, after all, so it was nice to finally be able to relax with the knowledge that everything'd worked out just fine.

He hugged Yusei tighter, never wanting to let go.


	79. White Day

**_3/20/19_**

Yusei woke up a week later bright and early. He, to his satisfaction, also found himself to be the one who'd rolled over on top of the other that night as they tended to do, which worked out well for what he wanted to do.

It was White Day, after all, and though he may not really be the planning type or one to pull off anything extravagant, he at least wanted to do something special for Judai. Judai'd been able to pull off Valentine's Day pretty well and he figured that now it was time for him to return the favor.

Carefully, he peeled himself off of Judai, smiling fondly at the other when he curled up further into the sheets and quickly latched onto the pillow that Yusei had moved to replace him - it wouldn't do for the other to wake up just yet, not if Yusei wanted this to work. He didn't bother changing beyond throwing on his jacket, seeing as it was a bit cold that morning, and yet again carefully opened and closed the door, making his way to the kitchen.

He bustled around quickly, and as he worked on making breakfast he couldn't help but think that he was glad they had another floor with the bedrooms on it - it meant he could be pretty loud in the kitchen without the noise ever reaching to the people still sleeping, or at least was muffled enough for it to not wake them up. Granted, eggs and bread in a pan didn't really make much noise, even with the light spray of oil he'd put on beforehand to make sure it wouldn't stick, so there wasn't really much noise to worry about in the first place.

Really, the main thing he was focused on was time - Yusei wanted to make sure Judai didn't wake up before he was done, so he stuck with a relatively simple breakfast plan and busied himself with finding the largest plate they owned while waiting for the food to cook. Soon enough he had a platter of food ready to go, and after pouring a glass of orange juice to go with it, he made his way back up the stairs and into the room.

Judai was still curled up in the bed, though the twitch he made when the plate clacked on the side-table showed that he was pretty close to waking up.

"Judai, it's morning," Yusei said, sitting down on the side of the bed next to him and nudging him softly, "Wake up, sleepyhead."

Judai groaned for a moment, still stuck in a sleepy haze before he turned over to look at Yusei and made a questioning noise. Clearly he was a bit confused as to why Yusei wasn't in the bed with him at the moment, and Yusei smiled at how cute a sleepy, confused Judai was.

"I made you breakfast," Yusei smiled, noting that Judai almost immediately perked up at that.

"You made me breakfast?" Judai asked, sitting up quickly wearing one of those bright, sunny smiles that Yusei was happy to be seeing a lot more of recently.

Yusei hummed affirmatively, grabbing the plate and holding it out for Judai to grab, "Happy White Day."

Judai's eyes sparkled in happiness as he looked down at the ensemble of food, and Yusei felt pride at having chosen to do the right thing for the occasion.

"Oh my gods, I love you so much," Judai said excitedly, patting the pillows next to him after a moment, "You're amazing, holy crap- come on, move over here, you're eating this with me!"

Yusei chuckled at that, obliging and moving over next to Judai on the bed, "I did make enough for both of us. I hope it's not too simple - I wanted to make sure you didn't wake up while I was making it, so I may have rushed."

"Yusei, this is perfect," Judai replied chirpily, pecking him on the cheek in thanks, "I get breakfast in bed with you, with it being food you made for me. Best. White Day. Ever." He stabbed a piece of egg and part of the toast with a grin before holding it out towards him, saying, "Now open up, I wanna feed you, you perfect man."

Yusei couldn't feel embarrassed at all about this, however, because he was too busy rejoicing that operation White Day Breakfast was a success and that Judai was praising him in between bites of food. Maybe he didn't suck at this love stuff after all.


	80. Guilds

**_3/21/19_**

"Ah, that's right!" Judai exclaimed, sitting up suddenly from where he was lazing about on the couch, "Sho said something about guilds in DDO!"

"Oh yeah, he did, didn't he?" Yusei replied, blinking in remembrance. He'd forgotten about that as well, with all the conversation that'd happened afterwards - it'd been amusing hearing about Judai's antics at Duel Academy. Speaking of which, he still needed to get that story about... what was it, flooding the Society of Light's dorm? Yeah, that sounded right - it'd been two weeks now, he couldn't believe he'd forgotten to ask.

There's never a dull moment with Judai around, it seemed, and Yusei liked that quite a bit. He'd already had the revelation that being forced away from his computer was doing him a lot of good, so even if in the moment he was disgruntled, he found himself fully encouraging Judai to drag him away from his work most days.

Secretly, of course. Judai knew, but Yusei felt like if he vocalized it he'd be getting dragged away for _too_ many breaks.

"Come on, let's look it up real quick," Yusei continued, waving Judai over as he started typing into the search bar. Once the other was close enough he pulled him down into his lap, glad that the chair was relatively big so there was enough space to be comfortable without letting his legs die too much. He rested his head on Judai's shoulder with a smile, wrapping his arms around him so he could reach the mouse and keyboard still.

"Is this really comfortable for you?" Judai mumbled, not for the first time either since this was becoming a common occurrence whenever they were both looking at the laptop and were downstairs.

"The answer to that is still yes," Yusei replied amusedly, finding a forum post that gave a run-down of all the things guilds provided, "Anyway, here we go - let's see what guilds do."

They both read over it quickly, mainly scanning over the bullet points half-way down to make it faster. It seemed to be mostly social features that guilds provided, like a guild chat and title flairs, though there were also special quests that could be taken as a group for bonus rewards like rare cards and cosmetics. Apparently you could even decorate your guild hall... which immediately told Yusei that this was something they'd be working on, since Judai seemed to love the 'achievement hunting' part of the game, especially when it came to special cosmetics.

"Hmm, six person quests max," Judai mused, thinking to himself, "We've got four people already, but we'd need two others and I wanna make our guild special so not just anyone will do..."

"Already decided we'll make our own, huh?" Yusei chuckled, not surprised in the slightest.

Judai just gave him a shameless grin in response, pecking him on the cheek quickly while he continued to think.

"I wonder if anyone plays DDO already," Judai said, glancing down at his phone in his hand, "Then I could just invite them to the guild and we'd be good."

"Go ahead and ask," Yusei responded, smiling encouragingly, "I'm sure someone's got an account, or at the very least would be willing to make one."

"That's true," Judai grinned, unlocking his phone swiftly and typing into a group chat, "While we're waiting though, can we look up what those guild halls look like? I want the special ones, so we gotta figure out what those are first."

"I figured you would," Yusei said, pleased at having his previous thoughts proven right.

Upon searching up a list of upgrades, they found that it was pretty well fleshed-out, with themes ranging anywhere from classic fantasy guild halls to having cosmic space items everywhere. The only thing that really stood out to Yusei though was the Stardust Dragon statue you could earn through completion of the star themed set.

"Okay well, obviously we're getting the star set first," Judai stated, taking the words right out of Yusei's mouth. He smiled fondly at the other, pecking him on the cheek to show his appreciation.

"Then we could go for the Kuriboh collection," Yusei pointed out, noticing the set had both Winged Kuriboh and Winged Kuriboh LV10 in it. They really didn't miss anything with this game, did they?

Made him want to look through the code for it. Actually, why hadn't he yet?

Yusei put it on his mental 'to-do' list right underneath asking Judai about the flooding incident.

Judai's phone buzzed with a response, and after a quick look he grinned and said, "Edo says he's got an account, so now we just need- oh wait, Sho's got one as well. Uh, apparently they both made accounts after finding videos of us playing in that Valentine's Day tournament?"

"...Seriously, that one got recorded and posted online as well?" Yusei sighed, sagging slightly down into Judai, "I really shouldn't be surprised at this point though, I suppose. Well, at least we've got the six people we need - now we just have to do the guild creation mission."

"We can do it tomorrow," Judai said, turning around as best he could seeing as he was in his lap to give him another kiss, but this time on the lips, "I know you've got that work deadline tonight."

Yusei sighed again at the reminder - he'd already finished pretty much all of it, but being the slight perfectionist he was when it came to technology he was going back over the entire thing to check for little mistakes he could fix. He loved his work, but deadlines... he always got slightly antsy around deadlines, to say the least. Something about them just bothered him and made him feel the need to triple-check everything.

"I'll get'cha another coffee," Judai said, sounding like an angel from heaven to Yusei as he spoke.

"Thanks," Yusei replied, smiling appreciatively. The bright smile that Judai gave in return probably did more than the coffee did to make it easier to get done with his work, though.


	81. Guild Name?

**_3/22/19_**

"Well, that does it," Judai sighed, looking at their quest log in relief, "Sheesh, this guild creation quest takes way too long."

"It's probably just so they have more active guilds," Yusei hummed, though he did agree that the quest chain took a bit too long for his liking - it'd taken a full two days for them to finish it, playing whenever they could. If it had just been the two of them, it would've probably taken as long as that one hidden quest had taken them, but the good thing about the guild creation quest was it let you split the item collection and duels between multiple people; Judai's friends and Jack and Crow had logged in and helped out whenever they had the time, which helped a lot with making it go faster.

"Yeah, but still... anyway, should I be the guild leader or should you?" Judai asked, looking at him thought, "Whichever of us it is, they have to be the one to turn in the quest."

"You be it," Yusei immediately replied, not even having to think about it. Guild leaders were the ones with access to the guild's layout and cosmetics, as well as upgrades, so that was all Judai's to mess with. He was just along for the ride and for the actual card rewards and rare skills.

They still needed decks and skills for non-tag duels after all, even if they would hardly get used. The two had yet to log-in without the other at any point in time, so really, they would just be for tournament usage. Well, and PVP rewards - some of the cosmetic items Judai wanted were rewarded for doing well in traditional duels in the arena, so they both would need decks to get them through that.

At least it was pretty fun to duel here, the aesthetics made duels feel just as interesting as turbo duels half the time.

"Okay then," Judai grinned, grabbing Yusei's hand before dragging him away through the town, "To the town hall we go!"

Yusei smiled and nodded, though he still wasn't completely used to the hearts aura that popped up every time they held hands. He'd never admit to it, but sometimes, right after they'd played the game for a couple hours, he'd grab Judai's hand outside of it and get confused when no pink and white hearts suddenly popped up in the air around them.

...Maybe they were playing this game too much, but it was doing wonders for Judai's public image _and_ his, surprisingly enough, so they'd keep playing. Apparently Yusei really needed to show his face to the public more, because the media was using him as their figurehead in encouraging people from Satellite and the city to get along well, and a lot of their shots of him came straight from the game and him interacting with people in town of all ages and backgrounds.

Not something he'd expected to happen in the slightest, but definitely something he'd support. Judai's sunny disposition only helped to further their cause as well, since in his records he's listed as being from the city; thus, they had somehow turned into being not just a fan favorite couple, but also the leading representatives of Satellite and city relationships.

Ridiculous, but whatever works, works, Yusei supposed. They hadn't even known anything about the impact they were having on all of this until Edo told them about it the other day while they were grinding out the quest items. Jack had been with them at the time and he simply laughed at their ignorance - apparently even he had known about it as people talked about it at the cafe all the time.

He'd never understand the obsession people could develop for this kind of stuff, personally. Yusei did have a theory, though, that some of the popularity stemmed from the magic of their titles. It'd make sense and explain the rapid way it spread through the entire population of Neo Domino, at least.

"Oh hey, it's Sho! Hey, what's up man!" Judai waved, noticing the other standing by the town hall.

"Hey guys," Sho replied, sending them a short wave back as they walked up to him, "Did you finish the quest?"

"We did," Yusei confirmed, giving him a nod in greeting, "We were just going to turn it in, Judai'll be the leader."

"All the hard work paid off, then," Sho grinned, before giving them a questioning look, "What are you going to name it?"

Yusei glanced at Judai, noting that he was now looking at him with a stare that was just as blank as his was, replying, "We... forgot to come up with one."

"Seriously?" Sho said, giving them an exasperated look.

"We were so focused on getting the quest done that we completely forgot," Judai said, laughing sheepishly afterwards while looking up in thought, "What would be a good name though?"

"We could base it off duel monster names?" Yusei suggested, though he was just as lost as Judai seemed to be.

"Nah, that'd be too specific... Oh, what about uh- actually no, not that one..."

"Something to do with stars? We've kind-of got that theme going on so far and we're planning on the star cosmetics for the hall anyway."

"Cosmic Heroes? Starlight? Star Destroyers- no, definitely not that one."

Yusei hummed, suddenly thinking about circumstances that had brought them here in the first place, "Chronostars?"

Judai and Sho stared at him, and just when he was about to worry that he'd said something terribly wrong Judai broke into a grin, "Perfect! It's got a pun, a star name, _and_ an inside-joke that no-one but us will get! It's perfect!"

"Of course you'd end up with something like that as the guild name," Sho said, though he was smiling in approval, "Wouldn't mind having that as a tag though at all, it sounds cool regardless of meaning."

Yusei looked to the side in happy embarrassment, proud that he'd come up with a good name and also very glad, not for the first time, that his face couldn't turn red in embarrassment too.


	82. Sleep Is Important

**_3/23/19_**

Yusei blinked tiredly as he took his headset off and set it to the side of the bed, glancing over at Judai who was doing the same as well. They'd been playing a lot of the game recently, considering Judai's enthusiasm when it came to working on their guild, but today they'd played for much longer than they usually did.

"Jeez, I swear I didn't feel so tired two seconds ago," Judai said next to him, leaning into his side instinctively.

Yusei cracked a grin at this, even though he was just as tired as Judai seemed to be - he'd not slept too much the night beforehand as he was working on work-stuff that had to get done. His work load had been picking up more in the past few days and while it was a good thing in the end, since it meant that things were finally moving beyond the preliminary stages for the reactor, it also meant more deadlines and work to be done.

This of course, meant less sleep when he took into account the hours he spent playing games and hanging out with Judai instead of catching up on lost sleep. Yusei may have been used to it before Judai came, but now that he'd gotten to have a decent sleep schedule for once for about a month now, he was really regretting having to go back to it. He very much _liked_ being able to have his time sleeping with the man he loved, thank you very much.

"You know you don't feel tired in-game," Yusei reminded, leaning back into Judai and wrapping his arms around him. He could feel his eyes start to droop the second he let his head rest on Judai's - when was the last time he'd been this tired, again?

Right, that one night right before they got together. He'd been so tired that he'd somehow gained the confidence needed to pull Judai down to sleep with him, which thankfully lead to them waking up and confessing to each other, but still - point was he was feeling nearly as tired as the last time he'd pulled an all-nighter working.

"Wanna just go to sleep?" Judai asked, voice muffled due to the fact he was burying his head into Yusei's shoulder again.

Yusei hummed happily in affirmation, glad that they'd already changed into their sleepwear before they'd logged-in since they knew they'd be playing the rest of the day. He pulled Judai down lazily onto the bed, pulling the sheets back and throwing them over so they could get inside. He let out a relaxed sigh as the sheets settled on top of them, pulling Judai closer and giving him a sleepy kiss on the cheek before closing his eyes.

"...You doin' okay, Yusei?" Judai asked quietly, and Yusei felt him wriggle a hand up and out of his grasp and bring it up to cup his face lightly; the thumb traced softly underneath his eyes, following the very faint lines of sleep exhaustion he knew were there.

"Tired," Yusei mumbled, blearily cracking his eyes open a bit so he could look at Judai, "Work's been picking up a lot recently, y'know." Judai was looking at him with a slightly worried frown, thumb continuing to trace his eyes softly as he studied his face.

"When did you finally get to sleep last night? You were still typing away when I fell asleep," Judai asked.

Yusei thought for a moment before answering, "I think three o'clock?"

Judai sighed at that, poking him in the forehead roughly in response, "Dumbass, why didn't you tell me? We could've slept in easily enough this morning, you know I wouldn't have minded at all. You need to get more than four hours of sleep."

"I'm still not used to a regular sleep schedule," Yusei admitted, rubbing his forehead where Judai had poked him. Did he have to do it so harshly? Maybe he just didn't realize how hard he'd poked him.

"Well get used to it," Judai said, giving him a determined glare, "We're going to sleep-in in the morning, then you're going to do your work, and then we're going to take a break from doing all our stuff and just relax, got it? If you have stuff to do or if you're too tired to do something, just tell me from now on, okay? I'm not going to be upset with you for being _tired_ , silly."

"Okay, sorry," Yusei said, giving him a tired smile, "I'll tell you from now on."

"Thank you," Judai replied, finally breaking into a soft smile and kissing him gently, "Now come on, let's sleep."

Yusei really had a lot to thank Judai for, and really, it only made him fall in love with him even more.


	83. Lazy Morning

**_3/24/19_**

Yusei laughed to himself in slight disbelief when he checked his phone the next morning, shaking his head as he read the email he'd gotten.

"Yusei?" Judai asked sleepily, head still buried into the pillows.

"Got an email, it says I just have to go in to the labs to hand-off an official report in a few days and that after that I'll have a week's break while they're going over all the work everyone's done," Yusei explained, smiling down at the other who'd finally deigned to raise his head to look at him, "Are you sure you're not a good luck charm? It feels like every time you're determined to help me somehow the universe decides to go along with it."

"Well, what can I say? I'm quite charming if I do say so myself," Judai replied, grinning satisfyingly with himself at the pun before tugging at Yusei's arm lightly, "Now come on, back down you go mister workaholic - I told you we'd be sleeping in, so that's what we're going to do."

"I don't think either of us will be able to go back to sleep," Yusei said exasperatedly, though he closed his email and put his phone back on the side table regardless and slid back under the bed sheets. It's not like he wanted to refuse, obviously, and now that he pretty much had a clear schedule for the next week he was going to take all the chances he could get to be with Judai.

"That's not what matters here and you know it," Judai replied, immediately engulfing Yusei in a warm hug and kissing his cheek in the process.

Yusei sighed softly, laughing slightly when Judai proceeded to pepper his face with eskimo kisses, "I know, I get it. I need to rest more."

"Exactly," Judai nodded sagely, taking on a serious expression before breaking it and laughing, "Those gears in your brain need maintenance if you want to keep working efficiently!"

Yusei rolled his eyes at that, which only made Judai laugh more; Judai had taken a shine to the joke that Yusei was a gear-head, always lost in his computer and parts as he tended to be, and it seemed to be one of his favorite things to say whenever Yusei forgot things. Yusei didn't mind it at all though, considering this was _Judai_ and it was clearly a very affectionate term - hell, the other had even straight up told him at one point early on that he thought he was a literal genius considering the stuff he was able to make from scrap parts.

Yusei was much more modest; he didn't think of himself as a genius, and more-so as a victim of circumstances. He wouldn't have even a quarter of the knowledge he had if it weren't for his friends, working together, and the need to learn out of necessity from growing up in the Satellite. A lot of people there knew how to utilize scrap parts, at the very least, for things they were never meant to be used for so that they could survive.

Yusei just happened to have been a determined kid with equally determined friends who all wanted to leave that place so they could help it, and machinery happened to be their answer.

Suddenly Judai's phone buzzed, causing them both to sigh.

"You should probably check that," Yusei mused, "Who knows, maybe it'll be just as good news as what I found on mine."

Judai groaned, though he let go of Yusei anyway and grabbed his phone off the other side table, "Well, guess we'll see, huh?" He spent a minute squinting at the screen to adjust his eyes to the brightness, rubbing at them with a yawn before finally reading the notification, "Oh, it's Johan. Says he'll finally be all settled in to his new place today and to tell him a day to plan on going over to the facility."

"Well, I'd consider that good news," Yusei replied, sitting up next to Judai and leaning on him, "Tell him any time after... two days is when I said I have to do the report, right? Any day after that is good."

Judai hummed in acknowledgement, tapping away at his phone with a response. He finished quickly and very nearly tossed his phone back to the table before turning back to Yusei and pulling him back into a hug.

"Okay, _now_ we go back to sleeping in," Judai said.

To Yusei's amusement, it would take them several minutes longer to finally crawl back under the warm covers because Judai didn't want to let go so that they could.


	84. Work Outfit

**_3/25/19_**

Judai raised an eyebrow when Yusei came out of their room and down the stairs, wearing a lab coat and button-up shirt. He looked damn good in it, in his opinion, and he made a mental note to get him in formal attire later somehow just so he could see him in it.

"Haven't had to wear this in a while," Yusei said, noticing the look Judai was giving him, "What, does it look bad?"

"The complete opposite, in fact," Judai replied, continuing to eye him with grin, "You look good in that, though I have to ask - isn't the coat... impractical when you're on your motorcycle?"

Yusei flushed slightly at the compliment before chuckling at the question, "I'm going to take it off, obviously, but I'm getting used to it in the meantime. It's heavier than it looks and the sleeves take some getting used to considering how... big they are." He held up an arm, tugging lightly at the bottom of the sleeve, which hung off his arm and dropped a few inches before stopping, saying, "At least they're the right length, so I don't have to worry about it getting in the way of my hands."

And now, Judai suddenly wanted to see Yusei in an over-sized hoodie and being just as accidentally cute as he was right now, fiddling with his sleeves as he was. Really, this man was just too much sometimes for him to handle - there were so many things Judai wanted to see him do, yet there was so little time and ways to make those things happen.

...Then again, if he just _bought_ him a hoodie like that and gave it to him to wear, he's one-hundred percent sure that Yusei would wear it; perhaps it wouldn't be hard to make happen at all. Formal wear, on the other hand, was expensive and something that definitely wouldn't happen for a while, especially when they had no need for it anyway.

"I never even thought about that," Judai responded, walking over and poking at the sleeves himself with a hum. With a sudden flash of inspiration, he grinned to himself before taking both of Yusei's arms and shoving his own up the sleeves - they fit without a problem, and there was _still_ plenty of space left hanging down.

Looking up, he saw Yusei giving him a confused look, eyebrows raised in question while wearing an amused smile. Judai's grin turned wicked as he forced his arms up all the way to his arm pits, hooking under quickly and tickling him.

Needless to say, the way Yusei's face changed from confused to suddenly understanding and horrified to struggling to keep his laughter in was highly satisfying. He tried to get away but couldn't due to the coat semi-trapping Judai's arms inside it, and soon enough he was gasping for breaths between his laughter.

"J-Judai- stop- I can't-" Yusei begged, struggling to get the words out while his face slowly turned red from a mix of embarrassment and laughter.

"No way I'm stopping," Judai laughed, hooking his fingers in a bit more when Yusei nearly managed to shake them off for a moment, "Surely you didn't think I'd forgotten how ticklish you are, Yusei. Your reactions are pure gold!" It helped that he found Yusei's uncontrollable laughter to be music to his ears, second only to the soft chuckles he'd give when they were having a quiet moment to themselves.

After another minute of torturing his poor boyfriend, Judai finally slid his arms out, laughing once again at the way Yusei automatically crossed his arms once they were free and pouted at him while catching his breath.

"Aw come on, don't give me that look, how could I possibly have resisted doing that?" Judai teased, quickly wrapping his arms around him before he had the chance to move away from him, "Besides, you gotta admit that you needed the laugh - I saw the look on your face earlier when you were finishing up your report, you looked like you'd sucked on a lemon or somethin'."

"...I do feel better now," Yusei admitted with a sigh, slowly uncrossing his arms once he was sure Judai wasn't going to start again and returning the hug, "I'm just not looking forward to having to spend the next five hours in a conference room."

Judai winced at that, feeling the utmost sympathy for him, saying, "Yeah, that sucks. I couldn't do that for even an hour, I can't imagine having to sit there for five." He leaned up to peck him on the lips, giving him a soft smile, continuing, "Well, I'll just make sure you've got some good food to come back to - any requests? I'm planning on spending today practicing different recipes anyway because Edo sent me an email about some jobs he might have available for me soon, and I need a refresh on how they're done."

"I'm fine with anything, you know that," Yusei replied, prompting Judai to pout at him slightly and narrow his eyes. Yusei sighed in response but smiled anyway, glancing off to the side in thought, "Alright alright, I'll come up with something, just give me a minute."

Satisfied, Judai pecked him on the lips once again with a grin before grabbing his hand, "Good, now come on - you need to get some lunch in you before you leave, and while I'm getting that you can keep thinking about what you want for dinner."


	85. View of the Bridge

**_3/26/19_**

"Hey, Judai," Yusei said, getting the others attention once again while they were eating breakfast.

Judai looked up with a questioning noise, a forkful of pancakes hanging out of his mouth.

Yusei smiled a bit at the sight before asking, "Mind if we leave a bit early today before we meet up with Johan at the facility? I wanted to show you something that I didn't before."

Quickly swallowing down his food, Judai gave him a nod and said, "Sure, I don't mind. Is an hour early enough for it?"

"Plenty," Yusei replied, going back to his food as he cut into the fluffy circle. Judai made really good pancakes, to say the least, as they weren't dry in the slightest but were also fluffy and not completely drowned in syrup.

Once they'd finished they went about getting ready to go, Yusei tossing Judai's jacket at him like usual in case the other forgot somehow and Judai pulling him down for a quick kiss before they could move out the door. They grinned at each other when they pulled apart, Judai leaning up further to peck Yusei on the nose teasingly.

"Alright, let's go see this place you wanted to show me," Judai smiled, tugging on his hand and leading him with a slight cheer out the door.

Yusei chuckled at his antics, pulling him to a stop so he could re-lock the door before he almost immediately was dragged along again to where his runner was parked. A minute later he was revving up the engines and bursting out of the parking lot, Judai holding on tightly behind him.

"I don't think I'll ever get tired of this," Judai admitted, holding on tighter and burying his head into Yusei's shoulder the best he could despite the helmets they were both wearing.

"It's freeing, isn't it?" Yusei agreed, feeling Judai nod his head behind him. Lucky for him, Judai must've been in a generous mood because he didn't have to deal with the usual pokes he liked to give him.

It didn't take very long for him to reach the place they were headed to, mainly because... well, it was on the route to the facility anyway. The Daedalus Bridge was one of Yusei's favorite places, mainly because of its importance in finally connecting the Satellite to Neo Domino, but also because it held a spectacular view of the ocean. Even better than that, though, was the little hidden outcrop along the shoreline that gave a view of both the ocean and the bridge itself, and had a small bench hidden in the shade.

Yusei pulled up slowly near the bench, stopping a few feet away and kicking the stop open so they could hop off, "Here we are."

"So this is the place, huh?" Judai stated, pulling off his helmet alongside him and putting it down on the seat before wandering over to the fence next to the sidewalk, "Whoa, that's a sweet view!"

"I come out here to think and relax sometimes," Yusei said, smiling softly at the sight and quietly snapping a quick picture of Judai while he was distracted. The way the sunlight was bouncing off of him and highlighting his bright smile as he looked out at the view...

 _Beautiful,_ Yusei thought, putting his phone away just as quickly as he'd pulled it out.

"There's a bench if you want to sit for a bit," Yusei mentioned a minute or two later, motioning to it with his head when Judai looked over a him.

Judai hummed, coming over quickly and sitting down with him before leaning on his shoulder and looking back out at the view. Soon enough, their fingers were threaded together between them, a peaceful silence falling over the area save for the light sounds of the ocean waves and the distant hum of the city.

"...I could fall asleep out here," Judai murmured, his smile having turned soft and content during the time they'd been sitting, "We should come back again."

"We will," Yusei replied quietly, squeezing his hand tighter for a moment and turning his head ever-so slightly to press a light kiss to the top of his head.


	86. Getting Data

**_3/27/19_**

"I shouldn't be surprised considering you said it was like a war zone, but _damn_ is that a lot of duel energy," Johan stated, staring wide-eyed at the readers in front of him, "I've never seen it so concentrated before."

Yusei looked on in surprise at the screens as well, recalling the averages that Johan had listed off to him from before; these numbers completely blew those out of the water, and he couldn't help but wonder if such a high concentration was dangerous - he certainly wouldn't be surprised if they somehow were, at least.

They knew the numbers were very accurate too since Yusei and Johan had made quick work of joining their different devices so they'd work together, not only making them more efficient, but also more accurate.

"It's unnatural," Judai said, giving the facility a relentless, wary stare from where he sat on top of Yusei's runner, "I don't know anything about how it'd look in number form like you guys, but I've got a theory that the reactor is somehow keeping it from dispersing. Floating duel energy isn't supposed to stick around for five minutes, let alone _nineteen years_. Acts like a hive-mind, too, if it's interested in you."

Yusei grimaced slightly at the reminder, glad that his core situation had been solved as quickly as it had been once Judai'd figured out the issue. He didn't want to know what might've happened if he kept going to the facility for long periods of time with part of the reactor's core still latched onto him.

Speaking of Judai, he looked over slightly worriedly at him for the third time since they'd been there, noting how tense he sat and the way he kept crossing and uncrossing his arms. This was the most restless he'd seen Judai be so far, with the exception of his reunion with his friends (nothing could really match that, he believed), and Yusei half-expected to see green and orange eyes with flickers of gold every time he took a glance back.

"A hive-mind, huh?" Johan hummed in thought, tilting his head slightly as he looked down at the monitor before turning to Yusei, "Think your stuff could pick up on movement like that?"

"Yeah, but it'd probably need a trigger of some sort. I've done tests here before and never picked up on anything that would suggest that kind of behavior, even though it definitely does," Yusei replied, tapping a few keys to change a few settings on his movement recording devices, "Any ideas for doing that?"

"Maybe dueling would do it? Or having duel spirits materialized, maybe there needs to be a spike of energy in the facility to make it interested-" Johan suggested before interrupted.

"No," Judai growled, still not looking at them and instead leveling a hard glare at the building with a frown, "The last thing we need is to aggravate it. As it is now, it's not dangerous to people, but if you make it active it _could_ be - learned that one the hard way, just don't do it."

Well, at least that answered Yusei's question from earlier about whether it was dangerous or not. On the other hand, he was now left with wondering what happened to Judai for him to even have experience with aggravating old, concentrated duel energy in the first place.

"We won't, then," Yusei reassured him, and thankfully it was enough to make Judai calm down to the point of being only antsy again instead of looking like he was two seconds away from storming the reactor room and destroying it.

Yusei shared a look with Johan, who'd also noticed how uncomfortable Judai was in the place, before mumbling just low enough that Judai couldn't hear him, "We should probably set something up here to collect the data and leave - besides, this way it'll give us more to work with later."

"Good idea," Johan replied back, glancing back at Judai for a moment before looking back at Yusei, "Judai looks just about ready to bolt, we really need to get him away from here. I'm guessing something happened here?"

"Yeah," Yusei answered, stopping for a moment to point at a few things he needed him to set up, "We ended up needing to strip away some outer parts of the reactor to get a look at its energy core. Let's just say Judai was very reluctant to let me anywhere near the thing and took quite a bit of convincing."

"That bad, huh?" Johan winced, picking up the modified set-up and standing up from where they'd been on the ground, "Alright, I'll just hide this thing in the bushes over there. If you'd like, I can just pick it up a day or two from now and bring it over so we don't have to come back - I get the feeling Judai won't let you anywhere near here without him."

"It's for a good reason," Yusei admitted, though he shook his slightly when Johan gave him a curious look.

As fascinating as duel energy and energy cores were to Yusei, he really didn't like thinking about how he'd essentially had a leech on him his whole life. He was still extremely grateful to Judai for helping him to not only realize it existed, but get rid of it too.

Johan shrugged, not taking any offense to the lack of information before shooting him a grin and waving him off with a wink, "Alrighty then, off you go - make sure to take his mind off of all this!"

Yusei stared uncomprehendingly for a moment before flushing red at the implication and leveling the other with a glare. Unfortunately for him, it only made Johan laugh as he turned around and left to go hide the energy reader.


	87. Protective Instincts

**_3/28/19_**

Judai was a very touchy person, as Yusei had very quickly come to realize and get used to within hours of when he'd first arrived, but the way he was barely letting Yusei go anywhere without hanging off of him was unusual. He noticed that Judai was also still significantly on edge from the day they'd spent at the reactor facility, judging from from the tense way he was holding himself even though they'd already been back home for nearly half an hour now.

Don't get him wrong, Yusei didn't mind the behavior much - he secretly rather enjoyed the doting attention, especially since he was on what was essentially a week-long holiday and didn't have anything he needed to do so he could just relax - but it was still unusual. Not only that, but it felt like Judai was quieter than normal; in this case, it was because he was letting his actions speak for him instead of his words.

Currently they were on the couch with Yusei pretty much lying curled up in Judai's lap, trying very hard not to make any noises due to the continuous head scratches the other had been administering to him for the last ten minutes straight. If it weren't for this and his worries about Judai being alright, he'd probably have fallen asleep two minutes in; Judai was still a living heater, after all, and as it was he could barely keep his eyes open with how comfortable and relaxed he felt.

"Judai," Yusei mumbled, gaining the other's attention immediately. He felt his chest vibrate lightly as he hummed in question, getting tugged even closer than before somehow as he asked, "You okay?"

Judai merely hummed out an 'mm-hmm' in response, burying his face into Yusei's hair and not even questioning why he was asking in the first place.

Yusei sighed at this, knowing he'd have to sit up and coerce the answers out of the other even though moving was the last thing he wanted to do right now. Still, he managed to do so, reluctantly pushing Judai's head off of his so he could turn and look at him.

"You don't seem okay," he said quietly, meeting Judai's confused gaze with his worried one, "You're not usually this quiet."

Judai pulled him back down into his grasp just as quickly as he'd pulled out of it, letting out a deep breath into his hair and muttering, "I'm fine, don't worry. Just still on edge from that place."

"Is... is there anything I can do to help?" Yusei asked, going to move his hands up before Judai caught them and kept them down, "Judai-"

"Just stay like this and I'll be fine in a bit," Judai interrupted, pulling back momentarily so he could give him a quick kiss. Yusei noted that he'd changed his answer to show that he wasn't actually fine, but the reassurance that he would be was appreciated regardless.

"I sorta get why that place makes you uncomfortable, but the way you're reacting makes me think it's much more dangerous than you've told me," Yusei said once they parted, doing his best to convey his worry through the slight frown on his face.

Judai sighed, though he at least seemed to perk up a bit and gave him another quick kiss before saying, "It's not that, don't worry. It's mostly due to me."

"Due to you?" Yusei questioned, tilting his head confusedly.

"It's the fact I'm part duel monster," Judai explained, lightly dragging fingers through his hair and across his scalp to assuage his worries, "All that duel energy sets off alarm bells in my head and this is the result."

Suddenly it clicked for Yusei, his eyes lighting up in realization - the war-zone levels of energy there were something that Judai could actually feel and sense, unlike him and Johan, and as a result the part of him that was part duel monster had its instincts rearing their head in alarm. Thus, due to these instincts telling him that something was terribly wrong, he was instantly put on alert for anything bad and became incredibly protective of his loved ones.

In this case especially, he had hyper-focused on Yusei due to the combination of their previous interaction with the reactor and the fact that he was his significant other, who was right in the middle of the energy-riddled area. It made sense that after hours of staying within the facility's vicinity and staying hyper-vigilant, Judai would need quite a bit of time just keeping Yusei close back at home to finally calm down.

"We won't stay nearly as long next time," Yusei assured him, leaning into him more while he did so, "And hopefully with the data we've collected, we'll be able to figure out a way to clean up at least some, if not all of the energy."

"I have no doubt you will," Judai replied, giving him a small, but relieved smile. A little bit of tension left his body as well, though evidently it'd still be a while until he could finally unwind.

For now though, Yusei would fully take advantage of the situation and enjoy the attention Judai was giving him - it was a nice change of pace, and he'd be lying if he said this behavior wasn't making his heart skip a beat here and there and his face flush. After all, it wasn't often that he was confronted with a Judai that gave him such serious, protective looks that felt like they bore right into his soul.


	88. Jack and Crow's Partners

**_3/29/19_**

It'd been a while since they'd first shown themselves, but Jack and Crow's duel spirits had finally decided to appear once again for a visit the following afternoon. Judai shared a glance with Yusei, looking between the duel spirits and the two men arguing in the kitchen in question.

Yusei just shrugged, watching the duel spirits play around the house with their own once again, saying, "Might as well, it's not like they don't know you can."

Judai nodded in agreement, giving him a quick kiss to the cheek before holding a hand up to his mouth and calling out, "Jack, Crow, come here! There's something I wanna show you!"

The arguing ceased immediately as they walked out of the kitchen, looking at him curiously; Judai held back a laugh at just how quickly they'd been able to put aside their differences, a sentiment that Yusei seemed to share as he noticed him hide a grin with his mug of tea.

"What's up?" Crow asked, pulling up a chair alongside Jack when Judai motioned for them to sit down.

At this point all the duel spirits in the room had noticed what was going on and were gathered around their respective partners, though they still chattered across the gap between them. If Judai hadn't already been so used to talking with Yusei over the sound of them, trying to hold this conversation would've been much more difficult to pull off without confusing himself.

"Well, do you guys want to meet your duel spirit partners?" Judai asked with a grin, gesturing around them with a hand, "They just showed up for the first time in a while - the only other time we've seen them around was that time we had that huge snowball fight that spiraled out of control."

"They're here right now?" Jack asked, eyes narrowing as they roamed over the room before landing back on Judai, "...I'll admit I'm curious to meet them."

"Heck yeah I want to meet my partner!" Crow answered excitedly, eyes widening slightly at the prospect as he shook Jack by the shoulder with one hand. Jack was quick to give him a small glare and do his best to try and brush him off, but to Judai's amusement, Crow's grip was too strong for him to be able to.

"Alright, here we go then," Judai said, concentrating on the two duel spirits in question and materializing them once he'd made connections with both of them. Once again he found himself grateful that he could simply materialize spirits so long as they were out and about - this way he didn't have to ask for their cards and ruin the surprise of who their partners were.

"Dark Resonator," Jack mused, a genuine smile gracing his face for once as he looked as his partner, who'd floated upwards to be at eye-level with him, "Makes sense that you would be my duel spirit partner."

Dark Resonator waved around happily, making a few clanging noises much like how Lua's partner talked; Jack would be able to understand them at least, though the rest of them wouldn't. A lot of people seemed to have partners like that, actually, though it made sense considering a lot of their partners were under level four and those types of monsters tended to not have mouths or ways to speak normally.

"Gale's my partner? Yes!" Crow cheered, laughing when Gale tackled him into a hug with a happy chirp, "How're you doin', buddy? Nice to finally get to talk to ya!"

While those two started to get to know their partners, Judai turned to Yusei and asked, "Should I get everyone else, too? Or will it get too loud in here?"

"We'll be fine, everyone knows to keep it down when they're materialized since others will actually be able to hear them," Yusei replied, raising an eyebrow at Junk Synchron and Winged Kuriboh respectively, "Right guys?"

They nodded vigorously in response, causing Judai and Yusei to laugh slightly in response. Judai was quick to materialize them as well, though they immediately ran off to play once again instead of sticking around - they got enough time to hang out with them as is, so they'd rather spend the time interacting with the physical world while they could.

"Was that Junk Synchron?" Crow asked curiously. Judai couldn't help but wonder how in the world Crow had been able to see them through the feathery fluff-ball that was Gale the Whirlwind hugging him and blocking his vision with their huge wings.

"Yeah, he's my main partner, though Quillbolt and Sonic Chick like to hang around a lot too," Yusei replied with a smile, sipping at his tea as he relaxed and watched Synchron running around with Winged Kuriboh, "Apparently I have a lot of duel spirits because I have a lot of monsters with low levels. I'm pretty sure you'll have quite a few as well since your deck is the same with your Blackwings."

And thus, the apartment got a lot more lively for the rest of the afternoon, especially once Judai reassured everyone that he'd be able to keep everyone's partners materialized without much issue.


	89. Materializing

**_3/30/19_**

Judai hummed halfway through the afternoon, catching Yusei's attention and earning him questioning look as he studied him. They were all still camped out in the living room, though at this point a couple more of everyone's duel spirits had come out to play, so it was more chaotic than before.

"Y'know, I should probably teach you how to materialize duel monsters," Judai said, "It's not like you can't now, after all, and if you practice you'll be able to do it without draining yourself so much."

"Yusei can do it, too?" Jack asked, looking over from where he'd been intently listening to his three Resonators as they chattered away. Evidently, whatever they were talking about had piqued his interest enough to not get bored, which was impressive but also made sense considering they were his duel spirits.

"Of course he can," Judai replied, gesturing idly in Yusei's direction, "He just has to learn how to harness his core's duel energy and then he'll be good to go."

"You make it sound so simple," Yusei muttered, sending him a disbelieving look, "but I get the feeling it's really not."

"Regardless of whether it's simple or not, you'll probably do just fine at it," Crow said, half-buried in feathery duel monsters, "Besides, it's a good skill to have so it's not like you can just _not_ learn it."

"See, Crow gets it," Judai grinned, sending the other a thumbs up that struggled to be returned due to Crow's arms being trapped. He turned back to Yusei, continuing, "Come on, we'll start easy. I know you have some level one monsters, so just pull out one of them and a duel disk and I'll walk you through it."

Yusei sighed but smiled and got up anyway, saying, "I'm assuming level ones are easier to summon energy-wise?"

"Yep! The cost goes up as the level does," Judai replied, scooting over on the couch so that Yusei had more room for his arm with the duel disk on it when he sat back down. Yusei pressed a button, and with a whir the duel disk started up and went into standby mode; Judai sneaked a peek at the card he'd grabbed and noted that it was Unknown Synchron.

"Alright, so here's how it works! It's all about intent," Judai explained, tapping the monster zones on the disk with a finger, "When you put your monster card down, you gotta do it with the intent to materialize them. Honestly, that does most of the work since you'll subconsciously channel duel energy into it when your intent to summon is there, but since we want you to eventually be able to materialize spirits without a duel disk you need to focus on being able to sense the duel energy as you pull it from your core."

"That... does sound pretty simple," Yusei admitted, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

"Well, it's simple for _us_ at least," Judai replied, giving Yusei a meaningful look that the other was quick to catch onto judging from the understanding that lit up his eyes. Being a King of Games was pretty much cheating in this regard, since it made it extremely easy to summon - for other psychics, like Akiza, they would have to focus a lot more on pulling the energy out (unless, of course, their cores held too much energy or they were going through an extreme emotional reaction - those types were never fun to deal with and always led to someone getting hurt).

"Well, here goes," Yusei said, pausing for a moment to focus before putting the card on the disk. Judai saw his eyes narrow slightly and flicker downwards towards his stomach, which was a good sign as it meant he could feel the energy moving in his core already.

With a high-pitched hum, Unknown Synchron popped up in front of them, its single eye closing happily as it floated around Yusei.

"See, you did just fine and on the first try, too," Crow said, backed up by a grunt from Jack in agreement.

Yusei smiled slightly in response, reaching up to Unknown who was quick to nuzzle against his hand before darting off to go play with the rest of his duel monsters.

"Now, go get the rest of your level ones and some level twos if you don't have enough and summon them too," Judai grinned, ruffling Yusei's hair slightly and retreating before he could protest, "You'll start to feel your energy reserves more as you use them up, so you get to keep them all here at once."

"...How tired am I going to be from this?" Yusei asked, giving Judai a wary look but going through his deck and pulling out his monsters anyway.

Judai gave him a foxy grin, answering, "You'll finally be able to follow a proper sleep schedule."

They all laughed when Yusei groaned in misery, summoning the rest of his monsters unceremoniously.

"Don't worry," Judai whispered, leaning down next to his boyfriend's ear and grinning at the ever-so-slight shiver he gave in response, "I'll make sure to only keep you up a little bit - you're cute when you're tired, after all."

Ah, how satisfying it was to watch Yusei turn red and try to hide when he teased him like this.


	90. Headaches

**_3/31/19_**

"Judai, I swear to the stars, you better have painkillers with you," Yusei muttered out when Judai walked into the bedroom. He was laying on the bed with a pillow over his head, presumably to block out as much light as possible to deal with his headache.

"Yeah, I got 'em," Judai replied, feeling a bit guilty for Yusei's current state. To be fair, it'd been so long ago that he'd started materializing monsters that he'd forgotten losing all your reserves like that the first few times not only made you extremely tired, but came with severe headaches as well. Not only that, but he'd had the bonus of being part duel monster as well, which made the headaches just a bit easier to deal with due to his constitution.

Yusei did not have that, clearly, though at least he wasn't curled up into a ball in agony. Judai was fairly sure at this point that Yusei had a ridiculously high pain tolerance for these sorts of things, especially when he took into account just how long it took him to pass out that time he'd extracted the reactor leech off of him.

With a groan, Yusei shoved the pillow off of him and sat up carefully, trying not to aggravate his headache any more than it already was. Judai was quick to hand off the pills and the can of soda, which Yusei gave him a slightly confused look for before shrugging and popping the can open.

"Taking it with caffeine makes it work almost twice as fast," Judai explained, smiling at the way Yusei's eyes seemed to light up at the thought, "Yeah, I learned that one from Yugi - apparently one of his friends that was prone to getting into fights in their high-school days picked up that tid-bit when they showed up at the clinic for the nth time. Must've been a hell of a story behind it too since Yugi looked like he wanted to burst out laughing when he was telling me."

"I wish I'd learned that way earlier," Yusei sighed, putting the soda off to the side, "The more you know, I suppose."

Judai climbed onto the bed with him, being careful not to jostle it too much for Yusei's sake, before gently pushing him back down to rest. He remained hovering over him, reaching out with a hand to softly brush the hair out of the other's face and pressing a light kiss to his forehead.

"Is it more like a tension headache or a migraine?" Judai asked quietly, continuing to play with a few strands of Yusei's hair while he studied him.

"I have no clue what the difference is," Yusei murmured, eyes closing to block out the extra visual stimulus to try and lessen the pain.

Judai hummed in response, moving his hand to press slightly against where he knew a pressure point was right behind his ear, "Well, tell me if this hurts or helps then." He waited a second for Yusei to nod ever-so-slightly before pressing down on both that point and another one that he could reach that was lower down and right where the head meets the neck.

Almost immediately, Yusei let out a sigh of relief, pushing back into his fingers with a tilt of his head, "Oh my _stars_."

"Definitely a tension headache, then."

"I don't _care_ what it's called, just keep doing that and we're good."

"There's ones on both sides, if you want me to-"

Yusei sat up, interrupting him with a demanding look that was ruined slightly by how his eyes unfocused for a second from sitting up too fast, "Do whatever you have to, just help me."

Judai laughed, shifting behind him and pulling him to sit in between his legs while he reached up and started pressing on pressure points on both sides of his head. Yusei practically melted into his hands in relief at having the pain pushed away for a bit.

"You've gotta teach me this later," Yusei said after a few moments of composing himself.

"Will do," Judai replied, pressing a soothing kiss to his neck. He may have caused the issue, but at least he was able to help get rid of it as well.


	91. April Fool's Day

**_4/1/19_**

Jack walked downstairs into the kitchen with a yawn, ready to brew up some coffee so he could wake up fully and get to a job interview - for whatever reason, this place had decided to have him come in at eight o'clock in the morning, so he'd gotten up earlier than usual to get ready for it. Granted, if he missed it it'd probably be fine... right?

He'd lasted this long without a job, surely missing one interview would be fine. He probably won't even get this one, either, considering his streak of being kicked out of places, but if it would get Crow off his ass for a couple days it was worth putting up with. Besides, he didn't get what the big deal was since he still had a bunch of money stored up from his time as champion and he was still earning from the occasional tournament.

With a grumble, he noted that the water tank on the coffee maker was empty, so he took it off and shoved it under the sink to fill it up.

And then suddenly he was wide awake, sputtering from the sudden blast of water that'd spewed at him when he turned the sink on.

"Goddammit! What the fuck?!" he yelled, hands shooting up to his eyes to wipe the water out of them.

"April Fool's!" he heard Judai sing behind him, followed by manic laughter as the other bolted back up the stairs to his and Yusei's room. Jack cursed loudly, following after him as fast as he possibly could.

"Get the hell back here you little shit!"

"Why the hell are you guys all yelli-" Crow started, his door cracking open slightly. Unfortunately, this was right as Judai passed by, who merely tossed him a wild grin and a wink before running back into his room and slamming the door closed; what Crow couldn't have prepared for was the shadow that lashed out after he disappeared and pants-ed him.

Jack may have been mad at the moment, but even he couldn't help but burst out laughing at the way Crow cut himself off with a girly squeak, nearly tripping over himself as he pulled back as quickly as he could and slammed the door shut with a red face.

"You just got fucking _pants-ed_ , holy shit!" Jack cried, giving a good kick to the door to tease him, "What happened to being Crow the Bullet, huh? Not so fast now! Ha!"

"Shut up, dammit! Don't think I didn't see how your entire front was soaked in water!" Crow yelled back through the door, voice wavering slightly as he hastily fixed himself up. He threw open the door once he was done, face still slightly red from embarrassment, and promptly laughed at the sight of Jack looking like a sad, angry, wet dog.

"You shut up," Jack ground out, eye twitching slightly as he turned to look at the door separating him from the reason for their suffering, "Help me figure out something to get back at them."

"Both of them?" Crow asked, laughter slowly calming down to a stop while he raised an eyebrow in question.

"You know as well as I do that they're working together for this," Jack stated, "Judai's been hovering over him like a mother-hen for the last week, I _highly_ doubt he'd pull anything on Yusei himself."

"Very true," Crow shrugged, waving him off towards his own room with a grin, "Go get changed first though, unless you like being in wet clothes?"

Jack sent him a withering glare, which only ended up with Crow laughing at him once more while he stalked off to his room to change.

* * *

"Ah, they're planning on getting back at both of us," Judai hummed, fingers running through Yusei's hair lightly while he watched him type away on his laptop. He'd immediately passed Yusei the video camera he'd been using once he got in the door, and he was just making sure it all got saved and stored correctly.

"That hearing of yours is stupidly useful," Yusei murmured, still only half-awake at this point. Judai hadn't woken him up until right before Jack left his room to get his coffee, and he definitely wasn't helping him stay awake with the way he was playing his his hair. At least pulling the video from the camera was something Yusei could practically do with his eyes closed.

Judai chuckled slightly at the sentiment, pulling away for a moment so he could grab the cup of coffee he'd brewed much earlier beforehand and give it to him, "Here, this should help you out."

"Thanks," Yusei said, perking up nearly immediately as he took it and knocked back a large portion of the liquid.

"How's your head today?" Judai asked, looking on at the scene with amusement, "You kept up five level three's yesterday for the last half of the day, you're doing really well."

"Still hurts a bit," Yusei replied, taking his time and sipping at the last half of his coffee instead of downing it, "Not much, though."

Judai frowned at that, though it was to be expected with how quickly Yusei was getting used to materializing things for long periods of time; over the last week he'd gone from keeping up level one's for half a day and getting an extremely bad headache to keeping up level three's instead and getting a headache that was only half as bad.

Granted, it was still a pretty damn bad headache, but like Judai'd noted before, Yusei's pain tolerance was _ridiculous_. This only made him worry more about the other though since he didn't have an accurate gauge of how much pain he was actually going through, so he'd found himself flitting around Yusei the entire time to make sure he was actually okay.

Yusei grabbed his hand and laced their fingers together, effectively pulling Judai out of his thoughts as quickly as he'd fallen into them, giving him a reassuring smile and hand squeeze, "You're worrying too much again. I'm fine, Judai."

"I know," he replied. Judai couldn't help the smile that came to his face when Yusei pulled him closer, pecking him on the cheek and lips before going back to his laptop so he could finally close it up.

"Good, now go back to listening to them so we can avoid everything they try to pull on us," Yusei said. They looked at each other for a moment, their eyes holding the same mischievous gleam for once as they set about planning.

No matter how hard they tried, Jack and Crow were unable to get back at them. In fact, they ended up getting caught in their own traps half the time, and thanks to Yusei's planning and Judai's shadows, their embarrassment would forever be remembered with the power of video recording.


	92. Event Work

_**4/2/19**_

"If you need anything, just call me, 'kay?"

"I will-"

"And if you get hungry there's leftovers in the fridge from last night."

"Okay-"

"If Jack or Crow try to get back at you for all of yesterday's pranks, make sure you tell them off because you're still recovering from summoning too high a level monster yesterday than you were ready for, then tell me so that I can give 'em a piece of my mind as-"

"Judai, I'll be _fine_ ," Yusei stressed, flicking him in the forehead lightly to get him out of his thoughts. They tended to spiral into different 'what-if's and possibilities when he was worrying about something, and getting his attention this way seemed to work just enough to snap him out of it.

Judai sighed, pulling him into a hug and muttering into his chest, "I know, it's just nerves. You've been dealing with constant headaches all week and I've never gone to a stupid fancy event like this before, even if it's just as a cook."

"We'll _both_ be fine," Yusei reassured, hugging him back and kissing the top of his head softly, "Watch, you'll be back before you know it."

"With more leftovers," Judai chuckled, taking one last deep breath before pulling away, "Edo did tell me that I was probably going to end up with some afterwards, though it's all going to mostly be chocolate stuff."

"Well, I like chocolate so that's great. Plus, you're the one making most of it in the first place, so that makes it even better," Yusei replied, pulling him back towards him for a moment so he could lean down and pull him into a brief kiss. He felt Judai smile into it, relaxing slightly under his grip as he kissed back eagerly.

"Alright, I seriously gotta go now," Judai sighed, walking out the door reluctantly after grabbing his bag (a new one of course, since his travel bag wasn't really suited for this sort of thing), "Love you, see you later!"

"Love you too," Yusei replied, raising a hand to wave goodbye, "Hope everything goes well."

The door closed behind Judai, and suddenly Yusei realized that this was the first time in the three months Judai'd been there that they'd be apart for more than two hours.

That was... a weird thought. It certainly hadn't felt like three months, and it was odd to know that he had an entire day ahead of him where he wouldn't get pulled into doing whatever activity had gotten Judai's attention for the time.

 _It hasn't even been five minutes and I already miss him_ , Yusei thought, sighing to himself before moving to the kitchen to get a drink before sitting down and trying to decide how to pass the time. Maybe he could finally start looking into games and virtual reality technology? He'd been meaning to do that for a while now and this would be the perfect opportunity to dive into it.

After all, Judai wasn't here to force him to take a break, which was really a double-edged sword - he'd be able to lose himself in the information without any interruptions and keep his thought process going, but on the other hand he'd probably forget to eat the whole day. Knowing Judai, he'd be able to notice immediately just from looking at him; if he didn't somehow, then he'd definitely know just from one look in the fridge.

He could set an alarm on his phone to go off every three or four hours? Yeah, that would probably work, plus as long as he kept the notification volume up he'd be able to notice when Judai inevitably texted him during any breaks he managed to take.

Yusei nodded to himself, pouring out a glass of milk to drink before going to fetch his laptop from their room. At least he'd been able to figure out something to pass the time with easily enough.

Now he just needed to make sure he actually set the alarms before he started...


	93. Alarms Work Well

**_4/3/19_**

Sure enough, a few hours later Yusei found himself scrambling for his phone as it blared out loudly at him, doing a fantastic job at ripping him out of his head and laptop within a split second. He cursed slightly as he fumbled and missed the button with his first attempt at pressing it, making him have to listen to the high-pitched beeping for a few extra, annoyingly unnecessary seconds.

Well, at least he'd remembered to set the alarm. It was better to be annoyed with it than to have forgotten and have to face a sad Judai later on in the day.

"Yusei, is everything okay?" He heard Crow yell from downstairs, footsteps ringing out around the house. When had Crow gotten back? Hell, what time was it? Yusei may have set the alarm earlier, but it's not like he really _remembered_ what time he'd put it at... just that it was probably somewhere around lunchtime.

"Yeah, just- just an alarm I set," Yusei replied when Crow came around the corner and poked his head through the door curiously.

Crow raised an eyebrow at him, a skeptical look coming over his face as he asked, "You... set an alarm?"

"...Yes?" Yusei answered, somewhat nervous about how Crow was staring at him like he was an interesting puzzle or something. He grimaced slightly when Crow looked over and saw his laptop, looking between the two before a sudden glint of understanding formed in his eyes.

"Oh, I see," Crow said, a cheeky smirk slowly growing on his face to Yusei's dismay, " _I see_."

Yusei sent him a glare, practically daring him to continue talking.

"This calls for _celebration_ ," Crow sang, eyes lighting up in mischief as he pulled out his phone and started typing out something on it, "Judai's accomplished the impossible task of teaching you to take care of yourself!"

"C-Crow!" Yusei hissed out, standing up quickly and stumbling after Crow when the other started to run away from him, "Don't you dare! It's not that big a deal!"

"Are you kidding me?! 'Not a big deal' my ass! You've never even _attempted_ to stop yourself from diving into your work for ungodly amounts of time before, the only thing that's different now is Judai being here!" Crow retorted, managing to slip back past Yusei once they'd gotten down the stairs and run up to his room, "I have to tell everyone, this is unprecedented!"

Yusei cursed under his breath again, barely too late to stop the door to Crow's room from being shut and locked. He pounded at the door, face burning from embarrassment as Crow continued to cackle loudly from behind it.

"Crow, I swear to the stars above if you tell everyone then I _will_ tell Jack about how you ate all of his-"

Crow suddenly stopped laughing, causing Yusei to grin slightly at turning the situation around. Granted, it was partially through a kind-of blackmail, but really something like this was simply expected between best friends/brothers.

"...Jack's wrath is worth this, I believe," Crow said, voice muffled from behind the door. However, Yusei could hear the uncertainty in it, so he pushed with one more thing to guarantee his success.

" _And_ I'll tell Aki that-"

"Okay, okay! You win!" Crow squeaked, his face slightly pale as he flung the door open whilst shoving his phone back in his pocket, "Anything but that, just no!"

Yusei huffed, and this time he was the one giving Crow a cheeky smirk in victory, "That's what I thought."

"I- I still already texted Judai though, sorry," Crow admitted, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, "He's the only one, though."

Yusei merely shrugged at that, not minding much at all - after all, Judai would've realized it anyway when he came back and food had actually been eaten, and he would've gotten teased either way. Judai being told a bit earlier didn't matter much in the long run, and in the end getting a bit more attention from Judai because of how much emphasis Crow had put on his actions made this a win-win situation.

"Come on, let's go get some food," Yusei said, his smirk dying down into a real smile as he gestured for Crow to follow, "I set that alarm for a reason after all, I'm hungry."

Crow grinned, catching up a few steps and giving him a friendly punch to the arm, "Seriously though? Good on you for finally starting to take breaks on your own. Proud of ya'."

"Thanks," Yusei replied, his heart warming slightly as he grinned back. Sometimes it was easy to forget when Crow and Jack argued so much, but they really did care about each other and him. They were _family_ after all - basically brothers.

 _Speaking of family..._

Yusei realized suddenly that he should probably introduce Judai to the rest of it back in Satellite. Maybe in a few days? He still didn't have to go back to work yet, and they'd extended the break time by a week and a half because there was just so much work they were going over that one week hadn't been enough; he hadn't visited since before Judai came, so he really needed to anyway.


	94. Chocolate Goodies

**_4/4/19_**

"I'm back!~"

Yusei perked up from where he was buried in his laptop at the sound of Judai returning, having moved downstairs to his desk after lunch so he could fiddle with some parts he'd connected to his computer.

"Welcome back. How was it?" he asked, spinning around in his chair just in time to get pulled up into a hug and spun around by Judai - well, as best as Judai could at least, considering the height difference. A smile instantly popped onto his face at this, and he couldn't help the short laugh that escaped him when Judai grinned at him afterwards.

"Great! I didn't have to interact with anyone but the other people in the kitchen, so that was nice - rich people parties aren't my favorite thing to be part of," Judai replied, tugging Yusei back towards the door for a moment so he could pick up the bag he'd put down so his hands were free, "Here, close your eyes for a sec'."

Yusei complied, closing his eyes while listening to Judai rustle through the bag, the sound of a foam food container being opened ringing out.

"Alright, open your mouth - I made this one, I think you're gonna like it," Judai said, a warm hand suddenly cupping Yusei's face lightly with a thumb pressing at his chin gently.

He felt his face warm slightly but complied once again, the taste of chocolate filling his mouth quickly after. He hummed at the taste, realizing that it was chocolate cake; not just that, but when he bit down on it, liquid chocolate poured out, meaning it was a mini chocolate lava cake.

"So?" Judai asked, his hand still not having left his face yet.

"That's really good," Yusei answered, opening his eyes back up only to see Judai staring at him intently. His face flushed more as he looked away, continuing, "I- Chocolate's one of my favorites so..."

He made the mistake of looking back after a moment; all it took was seeing Judai's signature, foxy grin on his face to know immediately that this wouldn't end in his favor.

"That wouldn't happen to be because of me, hm?" Judai teased, leaning up and close to his face, "Bet you can't eat chocolate now without thinking about me."

Yusei didn't deign him with an answer, though judging from how Judai's grin widened ever slightly he'd probably reacted just the way he wanted.

"Aw, don't worry," Judai said, finally taking his hand off his face and pulling him back into another hug, burying his head into his shoulder, "I can't either, and I'm the one that's got a free pass to make you do whatever I want still, remember?"

"...I was hoping you'd forgotten," Yusei admitted, remembering the 'housewife' incident. It'd been a while since that happened, so he'd half-hoped that Judai had forgotten he'd wheedled it out of him, but it would seem he hadn't.

"Anyway, as happy as I am to be home and hugging you, I really need a shower," Judai sighed, pulling away reluctantly with a smile, "I probably smell like a mix of sweets, seafood, and steak - I don't know about you, but that's an _awful_ combination."

Yusei just shrugged, having noticed it but not really being affected by it, "I can't really say much, I probably smell like gasoline and motor oil half the time thanks to working on the runners."

Judai laughed at that, making his way up the stairs with a wave, "Yeah, but that's not nearly as bad as this! I like that about you actually, it's very... you. A-anyway, I'll be back down for dinner in a bit!"

To Yusei's immense satisfaction, Judai looked embarrassed at having admitted that - it was about time he got a taste of his own medicine. He'd even stuttered cutely, too.

Now in much higher spirits than earlier, he grabbed the bag of food Judai'd left behind and wandered into the kitchen, putting it in the fridge and grabbing out some actual dinner food to warm-up on the stove. The least he could do after Judai'd been cooking all day was make dinner for him after all.


	95. Getting Ready to Visit

**_4/5/19_**

"Hey guys," Crow greeted, walking into the kitchen with a yawn and wandering towards the coffee maker.

"Mornin'," Yusei replied, giving him a nod before going back to his cereal. He and Judai hadn't felt like cooking anything that morning, hence a simple breakfast - besides, they had one of those cereals with the chocolate pieces in it and the bowl he'd poured had quite a bit, so he was happy. Chocolate and milk, two of his favorites, what a great combination.

Judai just mumbled out something sleepily, having another slow start to the day as usual. Yusei knew though, at least, that the second he noticed the coffee he'd put in front of him he'd wake up faster.

"Jack's still not down? Odd," Crow noted, knocking back his coffee plain black and refilling it immediately. He sighed in relief before finally going to the fridge and pulling out some cream to go with his second cup.

Yusei just shrugged, not knowing why Jack hadn't come down looking for coffee yet either but not really caring too much about it; sometimes he wouldn't come out of his room until almost midday, going over his deck or looking at the news or whatever he did in his spare time. They knew he was awake too, since they could hear his chair moving around occasionally and the sound of his desk tapping against the wall once in a while.

"What're you up to today?" Yusei asked, glaring slightly at his food when he couldn't pick up the last bit of cereal in his spoon because it kept getting pushed away, "Don't you have today off?"

"Yup, I do!" Crow replied, a cheery smile forming on his face at the reminder, "I was planning on going to visit the kids today, plus I told Martha I'd help her with some lights that stopped working suddenly."

"Mind if we tagged along? I wanted Judai to meet Martha anyway, and I could help out with the lights and anything else we could do to help out while we're there," Yusei explained, giving a quick glance over at Judai only to see that the other was totally engrossed in his coffee, eyes closed as he hummed lightly at the taste.

"Oh boy, she's going to have a field day with you two," Crow snickered, "You should probably get ready to explain why you didn't introduce him sooner when you've been together for how long now? Almost two months?"

"Almost," Yusei confirmed, sighing in resignation, "Knowing Martha, she'll drag it out then somehow rope Judai into doing... something, I don't know- It'll be embarrassing for me, though, and that's all I _need_ to know."

Crow pat him on the shoulder in sympathy, finally taking a seat at the table with an apple in one hand and coffee in the other, "Well, at least it's not like you forgot for a year, so it won't be that bad. If anything I think she'll tease you more about not visiting since Christmas time."

Yusei just sighed again in response, already starting to mentally prepare himself for the visit. He really should've visited earlier, but with Judai, the reactor, and all the other stuff that'd been going on he'd admittedly forgotten - not a good excuse, honestly, but true nonetheless.

"What's happening?" Judai asked, finally tuning into the conversation as he looked at them bemusedly.

"We're going to go visit the orphanage we were raised at, and Yusei's accepting the fact that the lady who raised us and runs the orphanage, Martha, is going to be peeved at him for not visiting in five months," Crow explained with a grin, taking a bit out of his apple with a loud crunch.

"Ohhh, I see," Judai said, pausing for a moment in thought before continuing, "Huh, if she gets mad at you not visiting for five months, then _never_ tell her about how I got here. Just from the little I've heard from you guys just now, I get the feeling I'd get a huge lecture regardless of how well she knows me."

Yusei couldn't help the snort he made at that, since that was _exactly_ what Martha would do. This was the woman who managed to not only raise kids in the Satellite of all places, but garner enough respect from the gangs in the area to make them leave them alone as well - lecturing Judai for time-travelling was something he could clearly envision her doing.

"Well, we'll leave in an hour or two, I gotta double-check and make sure I have the stuff I need to fix the lighting," Crow eventually said, finishing off his apple and tossing the core into the trash can in the corner of the kitchen, "Hey, I did it!"

"Really Crow?" Yusei said, staring deadpan at him.

"I didn't miss! Come on, give me a break!" Crow replied, pouting defensively as he got up and walked out, "Anyway, I'll be back when I'm done. See ya!"

"Lucky bastard," Judai muttered under his breath, "If he'd missed I'd have made him scrub the damn floor."

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him, an amused smile forming on his face at the statement. It would seem the kitchen really was Judai's pride and joy after all, considering how irritated he was at the thought of someone carelessly dirtying it.

Judai noticed him smiling at him and pouted, which only made Yusei chuckle at him in response.

"Just finish your coffee, I'll make you another if you want more," Yusei stated, ruffling his hair up before getting up to go wash his now-empty bowl.

Judai's eyes lit up at this, not even minding how his hair was now messed up and going back to drinking his precious coffee - from how he acted you'd think that Yusei was putting something in it to make it addictive. All he did was put flavored syrup and creme though...

Eh, as long as it made Judai happy, that's all Yusei cared about. It certainly didn't stop him from pulling out his phone to take a picture of the other with his hair all messy like that.

Unfortunately though, Judai noticed and he spent the next ten minutes playing keep-away whilst making sure the picture got backed-up to his personal storage for safe keeping.


	96. Meeting Martha

**_4/6/19_**

"Hey, I'm here!" Crow called out, knocking on the door to the orphanage enthusiastically, "I've got some tag-a-longs too!"

Judai took the time while they were waiting to look around the area; surprisingly it wasn't that run-down, and it would seem that some of the buildings had been rebuilt and reinforced, since the area looked relatively new. The orphanage was one such building, as it was solid with a clean front yard and bright, fresh paint covering its walls - clearly when it was being painted the children were allowed to give a hand, since the walls were littered with scribbles and drawings. It made it all seem much more homely and welcoming.

"This was one of the first areas that got rebuilt when they finished the bridge," Yusei explained, noticing Judai's wandering gaze, "It helped that it was relatively close the the bridge, to be honest, though it also helped that having the kids here made it a good place to build a school. It's only about a five minute's walk from here."

"How much have they rebuilt so far?" Judai asked curiously, taking in all the green that was a very stark contrast from the reactor site, which was still very dusty and surrounded on all sides by rubble.

...Huh, that probably was another reason he didn't like the reactor - the area around it reminded him too much of _that_ spirit dimension, with all its ruin and empty, rocky plains.

He felt Yubel soothe him in his mind before he could go too far into those memories.

"They're getting there, rebuilding the entirety of Satellite is a huge project - I'd say about only ten, fifteen percent has actually been completed," Yusei replied with a shrug, though he smiled and continued, "They've actually been pooling most of their resources into getting people healthy again and relocating them to better living spaces, even if temporarily, so that they can do larger chunks of land at a time."

Judai returned the smile, though he didn't have any time to reply before the door was suddenly opened and kids came pouring out, immediately surrounding Crow. They didn't notice him or Yusei yet since they'd opted to stand a bit further behind while they were waiting.

"Crow, it's good to see you!" A woman greeted - that must be Martha then, judging from the hug she pulled Crow into two seconds later while laughing, "And what's this about tag-a-longs?"

"Yusei came as well, and we've got someone new for you to meet," Crow explained, laughing as he got pulled away by eager kids into the house, "Don't hold back on 'em, Martha! I'm counting on you!" His voice faded as he got pulled around the corner, and then there were three.

"Oh? This should be interesting, then," Martha laughed, turning back to them, "It's good to see you, Yusei - nice of you to finally visit this poor woman for once!"

"Ah... sorry about that," Yusei replied, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, "Things have been pretty hectic for the last few months."

"Well, I suppose that's alright - I know life can sometimes hit hard and hit fast. You're here now at least," Martha said, a kindly smile forming on her face, "Now, are you going to introduce me to your friend here?"

Judai watched with rapt attention and utter joy at how Yusei's face turned pink and how he was suddenly a stuttering mess. It was different from watching him do this all the other times, since it was from pure shyness and not anything that Judai had done, and it made his chest tighten in adoration.

"T-this is, ah-" Yusei started, clearing his throat to try and regain his composure, "This is my b-boyfriend, Judai. Judai Yuki."

Martha suddenly smiled widely, her excitement and happiness for Yusei clear in her eyes as she turned to look at him, "You got a boyfriend? Nice to meet you Judai, I'm Martha - I suppose he'd have told you already, but I'm pretty much the one who raised Yusei here."

"Nice to meet you too," Judai grinned, almost as widely as she was. Unlike Yusei, he wasn't embarrassed in the slightest - it helped that seeing Yusei so out-of-character had made him feel like he'd drank a whole bunch of energy drinks and was now giddy from the caffeine spike. He shook her hand with a tight grip, winking and saying, "I'm kinda the reason Yusei hasn't come to visit in a while, so go easy on him, okay?"

"Well, if that's the case I _suppose_ I could do that, just this once," Martha teased, sending a wink back, "Ah yes, I can already tell exactly why you two get along - tell me, do you live with him and the other two?"

"Yup! And thank goodness I do, too - did you know they were eating nothing but instant ramen all day, every day?!" Judai exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air dramatically, "If I didn't fix their kitchen into being an actual kitchen rather than a ramen storage room, they'd _still_ be eating nothing but that terrible excuse for a food! Even then, I do most of the cooking, though at least Yusei learned to cook and helps me out a lot with prep so I'm not doing it by myself all the time."

"They did what?" Martha replied, also gasping dramatically in horror before pulling a genuinely horrified Yusei into a side-hug, "Well, at least you set them straight. So Yusei's being a good boyfriend to you, at least?"

"Oh he's wonderful," Judai grinned, placing a hand on his face and sighing happily, "He cooked dinner one time when I got back from work without me even having to ask, since my work entailed... well, cooking all day pretty much. And whenever I accidentally injure myself he always _insists_ that I let him properly clean it and bandage it, even if it's something little that'll heal quickly. Oh, and here's something to be proud of- he set alarms for himself to get off the computer and take breaks from his projects so that I wouldn't worry about him while I was gone all day working!"

"That is something to be very proud of! I'm glad at least one of my boys got my 'be a gentleman' teachings through their thick skulls," Martha laughed, patting Yusei roughly on the back before letting him stumble out of her grip, "Well, if _any_ of the boys give you trouble, just tell me, alright? I'll put 'em back in line for you."

"Will do," Judai smiled, giving a mock salute and another wink before asking, "Now, I heard you needed some help? I'm not so great with tech and stuff like that like Yusei is, but I'm pretty good at entertaining kids and cooking."

Martha waved them in with a smile, walking back into the house and answering, "We'll see - it'll be lunch time soon, so you can definitely help me with that. We should probably go rescue Crow for now from the kids though, or else he'll never even get to see the broken lights in the upstairs hallway."

Before following, Judai turned to Yusei and took a good, long look at how completely and utterly flustered he was, committing it to memory. He grabbed his hand, tugging it to get his attention on him before pulling him down suddenly for a kiss.

"...This is the worst idea I've ever had," Yusei breathed a few seconds later, and Judai elatedly prevented him from bringing his hands up to cover his face.

"Aw, I love you too Yusei," Judai teased, tugging on his arms as he headed towards the door, "Now come on, we shouldn't keep anyone waiting."

The glare that got sent his way was thoroughly thwarted by the slight upwards tug on the edge of Yusei's mouth.


	97. Eating Habits

_**4/7/19**_

"So uh... did you want help with lunch?" Judai asked an hour later from where he sat, surrounded by kids as they ran around playing with Winged Kuriboh and Junk Synchron.

Martha hummed, giving him an evaluating look before smiling, "Just keep entertaining these rascals, I can handle it just fine. Besides, you said you cook all the time, right? Let someone else make you food for once."

"I mean, Yusei did last night," Judai retorted, though Martha just laughed and waved him off.

"Good! Now let this old woman feed you too, young man," she stated, leaving no room for argument and retreating to the kitchen.

"Well, it would seem Martha's taken a shine to you," Crow said, coming down the stairs and setting his tools down on one of the tables in the room with a huff. Yusei followed after a few seconds, dusting off his jacket as he came down the stairs and smiled at Judai.

It would seem Yusei had finally regained his composure - oh well, Judai would just have to work on embarrassing him again once lunchtime came around. It shouldn't be too hard with both Martha and Crow here, though he kinda wanted to embarrass Crow too with Martha as payback for all those photos he'd been taking of them; too bad Jack wasn't here as well, since he was in on that operation too.

"I suppose so," Judai grinned, walking over to Yusei and pulling him into a side-hug since he couldn't exactly throw an arm around his shoulders, "It helps that we've got a common interest, here."

Crow snickered at that, "Oh man, Yusei's face when you guys walked in the room was hilarious. What'd you two do to him?"

Judai hummed, placing a hand over his heart dramatically, "We just talked about what a _wonderful_ gentleman Yusei's become, we did nothing wrong!"

Yusei glowered at him, though Judai could feel him lean into the hug more so he obviously wasn't mad at all, "You told her about the kitchen... and the ramen."

"You told her _what_?" Crow balked, giving them both a frantic look, "Please tell me I did not just hear what I thought I just heard. You told her about the ramen?"

"...Yeah?" Judai replied, giving him a confused look. What was so bad about saying that he'd fixed the kitchen?

 _They clearly were hiding it so that they wouldn't get lectured on their eating habits_ , Yubel told him, amusement oozing out of her in waves, _basically, they were being bad kids and knew it, and didn't want mom to find out._

"Oh, I see," Judai said, now giving both Crow and Yusei a very judgmental stare, "Really you guys? Actually, how did you avoid her finding out for so long?"

"We usually just strayed away from the topic of food whenever it came up," Yusei explained, not looking nearly as put out as Crow was at the moment. Judai couldn't really fault him for that one, though, since he'd already been lectured by Judai about eating properly and witnessed the entirety of their ramen stash being thrown out in front of him.

That'd been an extremely satisfying moment for Judai - never before had he hated a food as much as he hated those cups and bags of noodles. Trashing them was cathartic after being forced to eat them for almost a week straight.

"She's going to bring it up," Crow despaired, crocodile tears forming in his eyes as he caught the attention of the kids and turned to them, "Kids, help your big brother Crow here escape the wrath of Martha!"

"No one can escape that!" One boy laughed, though he and some of the others ran over and dog-piled Crow in hugs.

"Just accept your fate, Crow, you know you deserve it if it's from Martha!" Another exclaimed with a huge grin - this was the one with Winged Kuriboh on their head at the moment, so they hadn't joined in the group hug. They were much more preoccupied with the ball of fluff to do so.

Crow got his breath knocked out of him when one of the girls accidentally kneed him in the gut, and Junk Synchron made all the kids laugh when he claimed Crow's head as his throne.

Judai shared a look with Yusei, their eyes sparkling with mischief as they both grinned, pulled out their phones at the same time and started snapping pictures of the scene.

This kind of revenge was the best kind, and very, very sweet.


	98. Dirty Jokes

**_4/8/19_**

"Lunch is ready!" Martha called out from the kitchen, poking her head out for a moment to wave everyone over, "Come get your food while it's fresh."

The kids all cheered immediately, rushing over to the kitchen and leaving behind a slightly-winded Crow, who'd been stuck getting chased and dog-piled the entire time they'd been waiting, much to Yusei and Judai's amusement; unlike Crow, they'd mainly been hanging out with the calmer kids who were more interested in listening to Judai's stories about other places and playing with their duel monsters.

This also meant that Yusei'd had to materialize more monsters, including some of Crow's since they were considerably more... fluffy and child-friendly than most of the other two's, so even now he was getting his daily practice in. At least it felt like a break in the end because they were a mix of level two's and three's instead of being all level three's and four's.

"Sometimes I forget just how much energy children have, and then I come back here and get reminded all over again," Crow breathed out, sitting up from the floor and stretching out, a few pops ringing out as he did so.

"That was only thirty minutes though," Judai teased, patting him hard on the back right after he stood up and causing him to stumble forward, "I was with them an hour and a half before you two finished fixing the upstairs to your liking, are you sure you're in shape? Maybe you need to come here more often, build up your stamina."

"You say that like you don't have a ridiculous amount of stamina, Judai," Yusei stated, giving him an unimpressed look. Judai was an unfair reference point to compare to since he was part duel monster and had increased everything because of it.

"...Y'know, I'd make a joke here but there's children around," Crow suddenly grinned, looking between the two of them with a glint in his eyes.

Both Judai and Yusei stared at him in confusion, not understanding what joke there was to be made in the first place. Evidently though, Yubel or Haou must've explained it to Judai since his face turned red about ten seconds later.

"Crow, what the- _no_! Bad!" Judai exclaimed, pointing at him with a scandalized look, "Why would you even think of that? Do you think about these things a lot or something?!"

"What? No, of course not!" Crow retorted, crossing his arms defensively, "It just- it's a good joke, come on, and it's a common one too!"

"...I don't get it," Yusei muttered, watching the two as their argument started devolving into other topics like food, cards and other things that were more entertaining for the kids to watch as they ate their food. Every once in a while they'd cheer whenever they agreed with something one of them said, and it eventually turned into a competition of how many kids they could get cheering for them at one time.

Apparently uttering his confusion was reason enough for Yubel to appear as a spirit next to him with a snicker, leaning conspiratorially next to his ear with a hand up to explain, "He was implying that Judai must be great in bed, with stamina like that."

... _Oh_ , Yusei thought, his eye twitching slightly as he took a slow, deep breath to try and stop his face from warming any further; it failed, of course, like it usually did nowadays whenever anything having to do with Judai popped up.

"I'm just going to get food now," Yusei said, walking into the kitchen while Yubel laughed behind him for a while before disappearing.

While he was at it, he made sure to grab Judai a plate of food too, conveniently 'forgetting' that Crow would need one as well - he could get his own just fine.


	99. Calls For Intervention

_**4/9/19**_

"Judai, you're a duelist, right?" One of the kids asked shortly after lunch finished. Everyone was stuck in the lull that came after a filling meal and had gathered all the chairs into one area so that talking was easier without having to shout across the room.

"Sure am," Judai answered, smiling as he leaned forward and rested his head in his hands, "There's apparently videos online of me dueling in tournaments, if you wanna watch them." He watched with great amusement at how excited all the children suddenly became, turning as one group to Crow and Yusei and practically begging them to set up the videos on the TV in the room.

"Alright, alright, we'll set it up!" Crow reassured them, gesturing for them all to sit back down, "Give us a minute, okay?"

"So you're a duelist as well?" Martha asked, pulling up a chair next to Judai. She must've just finished washing the dishes, considering the washcloth she slung across her shoulder in the process.

"Yeah, that's my... main job I guess? I started doing it just so I could get money to fix their kitchen but uh, now I'm in the pro leagues somehow," Judai replied, giving her a sheepish grin, "The cooking thing is something a friend of mine starting offering me whenever one popped up that I could do so that I had another source of income just in-case."

"Well, at least you're being responsible and finding other jobs in the first place," Martha chuckled, though her eyes narrowed shortly afterwards as she continued, "I heard that a certain brat of mine still hadn't managed to find a job."

"It's actually amazing that he hasn't," Judai said, looking up in thought, "He's failed thirty-two job interviews in a row now. Either he's supremely unlucky, he's applying for all the wrong things, or the world is just out to get him."

"How in the world- what kinds of jobs is he applying for?" she blinked, genuine confusion and worry coming over her face. She may be a 'tough-love' type of person, but she did care after all.

"Beats me, I never asked since he's always a bit too irritable about the subject. I think being rejected so much is really starting to get to him," Judai admitted, frowning before looking over to Crow and Yusei, "You'd probably get more insight from those two, they know him way better than I do after all."

"It might be time to stage an intervention," Martha hummed, and honestly Judai was all for that - Jack had been getting more irritable in general as of late, to be honest, and it wasn't helping anyone.

The TV lit up at that moment, already on the video of Judai's first tournament finals match where he'd won with Winged Kuriboh LV10. The kids all cheered and gathered around the screen to watch before Yusei pressed play, and soon enough they were all totally engrossed with the duel playing before them.

"I heard something about Jack over here?" Crow asked, sitting backwards in a nearby chair as he usually did. Yusei grabbed a chair and dragged it over so he could sit side-by-side with Judai, which brought out a warm smile from him as he leaned over and pecked his cheek quickly in response.

"We were discussing how odd it was for him to fail so many job interviews in a row," Martha replied, glancing over at their interaction and smiling at it for a moment before returning to the subject at hand, "It's actually quite worrying, I was wondering if an... intervention needed to be staged?"

"Well, it'll certainly make him think a bit at least," Yusei said, frowning as he brought a hand up to his chin in thought, "He's been a lot more annoying lately, at least."

"Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that one," Crow nodded, eye twitching slightly, "It got bad enough the other day that I nearly called Carly to ask her to drag him away and out of the house. I mean, it's not like he _doesn't_ have money - he's still got that bank account filled with cash from when he was the champion, but that's all savings and he refuses to take anything out of it. He gets money from tournaments, but then he spends it all on that coffee he loves so much and goes into debt because of it."

"So pretty much, he needs a job so that he's not in debt anymore, and that's all you're asking from him - to get rid of the debt," Judai summed up, getting nods from both Crow and Yusei.

Martha sighed, bringing the three's attention to her, "Well, I suppose this is partially my fault - I never did teach you guys about money management because it'd never been relevant at the time. Clearly you two learned it, but Jack never did - I shall rectify this myself."

Judai shared a look with the other two, all three thinking the same thing.

 _Rest in peace, Jack._

Also, _Thanks the gods it wasn't them._

Accepting that as the end of that conversation, they tuned back in to the TV, noting that the duel had just ended and the announcer was announcing Judai's winnings.

" _-winner of the New Year's After Party Tournament is Judai Yuki! He's won the grand prize of three hundred thousand yen and a spot in the esteemed Spring Blossoms Tournament in April! Look out for this newcomer, because he's-"_

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that!" Judai blinked, pulling out his phone so he could check out this tournament he'd gotten into, "It's April already, jeez - alright, tell me just how popular this thing I'm dueling in is."

"It's televised, reported on, all of that - it's held in the Kaiba Dome, too," Yusei explained, giving him a sympathetic smile when Judai grimaced ever-so-slightly at the thought.

He may be fine on stage and interacting with people, but he wasn't a huge crowd type of person; he could deal with it, but still, it wasn't something he liked to have to be in the midst of. Judai would just have to make sure he used as many back-doors and out-of-the-way hallways as he could to avoid the crowd.

"Think you could get me take me there beforehand for a bit?" Judai asked. Damn, that was a huge amount of money in the prize pool- wait, there was a title for winning? That was kind-of cool, though he really didn't need anymore titles at this point. What would people call him if he had too many? Oh gods, he could see it now - everyone in the crowd cheering a different title for him, which was as hilarious an idea as it was mortifying.

"Not a problem at all," Yusei replied, leaning into his side reassuringly, something Judai was always grateful for. Yusei's hand tightened it's grip on his as well, keeping him grounded when his thoughts tried to wander - he hadn't even noticed that he'd grabbed it in the first place.

"He's got special access to a bunch of things there since he's the current champion," Crow added with a grin, giving Judai a thumbs up when he looked over curiously, "You'll be fine, just make sure you win the whole thing!"

"I'll make sure it's playing so that the kids can watch, so know that we'll be cheering you on as well," Martha said, grinning as well and patting him on the shoulder roughly.

And suddenly Judai couldn't worry anymore for the moment, as he was too wrapped up in the warm reassurance and belief coming from everyone around him to even think about worrying.


	100. Kaiba Dome Arena

**_4/10/19_**

It was decided that a few days later, when they were absolutely sure that Jack would be at home all day, Martha would come over for a surprise visit to teach, in other words _lecture_ , the poor soul about money and anything else she'd managed to think of that was important for him to know. When the time came, the three escaped the house bright and early, having given a spare key to Martha when they'd been at the orphanage; they definitely weren't going to be there when shit inevitably hit the fan.

"I've got an early job to get to, so I gotta split," Crow said, smiling apologetically, "You guys were going to the Kaiba Dome, right?"

"Yeah, there shouldn't be anyone there all day and I've got keys for the place, so this works out well," Yusei replied. He double-checked to make sure he'd grabbed said keys- yep, there they were, on his key-chain right next to his runner's key.

They waved goodbye to Crow, driving off to the Kaiba Dome after parting ways. It didn't take very long, which was lucky for Yusei considering Judai was now back to poking him while he drove; thank the stars Yusei was extremely good at piloting his motorcycle. Pokes didn't hold a candle to the stress caused by duels, let alone shadow duels with all that debris flying everywhere the entire time, but the twitches he made could still cause problems regardless.

"It's even bigger now," Judai grumbled slightly, gazing up at the stadium from where Yusei'd stopped in the parking lot.

"Right, you'd have seen it before," Yusei remembered, giving him a curious look as he put their helmets away safely and locked everything up, "You've really never been here, though?"

"I have actually, but it's been more than twenty years so everything's bound to have changed," Judai admitted, sighing a bit at the memory, "They held the entrance exams for Duel Academy here, but this entire place has changed so much it's unrecognizable to me. Besides, I was only here for like, two hours - hell, I was _late_ for my entrance exams! I didn't exactly get to explore."

Yusei chuckled at that, ruffling his hair and earning a pout from Judai, "Of course you were, you wouldn't be Judai if you hadn't."

"Hey, I'm not that bad anymore!" Judai complained, though he was soon laughing as well as they walked over to the back entrance they'd parked by, "Okay well, maybe I still don't like school, but I've since come to learn that I'm a hands-on learner so that's the main reason why I don't. I like learning stuff a lot more now than I did before."

"You _were_ pretty patient when I was explaining Momentum theory to you that one time," Yusei teased slightly, unlocking the door and holding it open for Judai, who grinned at him in response.

"Thanks- and that time was a bit of an exception because I needed to know it to understand what that stupid reactor fragment was doing," Judai replied, frowning slightly at the thought, "Otherwise I think it all would've gone over my head more."

"Well, either way you learned it, so good job," Yusei said, wanting to get off the topic for both their sake. After re-locking the door he grabbed Judai's hand and threaded their fingers together, effectively bringing a smile back onto the other's face as he tugged him along, "Come on, do want to go out onto the arena first or to the top-most viewing area?"

"The arena," Judai answered, "I need to get a feel for just how big this place is going to be when I'm dueling."

"If it makes you feel better, you won't be the main focus until you get to the finals," Yusei explained while they wound through the hallways, making sure to point out certain paths to avoid as they got closer to the exit doors to the middle, "The platform splits into six different dueling arenas, so you won't be singled out until you get to the finals. There's a lot of people dueling in this tournament so you'll have a lot of time to get used to the crowd before then."

"No doubts about me getting there, huh?" Judai noted, and Yusei was happy to see a soft smile grace his face while his eyes glittered with mirth.

"No doubt at all," Yusei reiterated, nudging his side in reassurance before leaning over and pecking his cheek quickly, earning a quiet chuckle in return. Soon enough they reached this side of the stadium's contestant entry corridor, a pair of doors opening up to stairs that lead up and out onto the field.

Judai's grip on his hand tightened slightly as they wandered out towards the middle of the platform, and they both took a moment to just take in the size of the place - it was absolutely huge, and the platform, which was easily a couple blocks long, was surrounded by a race track for riding duels. The crowd seating area was tiered into three sections with fifteen separate levels, which Yusei noted was a new addition since when he'd dueled in this place last, there were significantly less seats than there were now.

They'd probably taken advantage of all the destruction that had happened in this place due to shadow duels to push through as many pending upgrades as they possibly could; it's not like they didn't have the money to do it either, since this was Kaiba Corp. - they had so much money it was almost impossible to fathom. Yusei wouldn't be surprised if remodeling this place hadn't even put a dent in their wallet.

"Well," Judai eventually started, taking a deep breath as he stared up and out over the empty seats, "This'll be a new experience at the very least. Now that I know this much, I should be able to adjust quicker when the day finally comes."

"You'll be just fine," Yusei said, pulling him closer before dragging him down to the ground and into his lap so he could hug him. Judai yelped slightly at the sudden change, though he laughed and leaned into the hug once he got his bearings back.

"We'll stay here for a bit, enjoy the weather - it's a nice day after all," he continued, earning more laughs from Judai.

"First the bridge view, now this... we're just building up a whole list of places to go and enjoy the weather, huh? What's next after this place?" Judai grinned, relaxing finally in his arms with a content sigh.

"The top-most viewing platform for the stadium, obviously."

"Of course, how could I forget?"


	101. Viewing Area

**_4/11/19_**

They must have dozed off at some point, because Yusei found himself being gently nudged awake by Judai a couple hours later. He winced slightly when he sat up, his neck complaining when he moved it due to how stretched it was from leaning on Judai's shoulder for so long.

"We probably shouldn't have slept on the ground, but at least the arena's super clean," Judai mused, wincing himself when Yusei stretched his back and a loud 'pop' rang out through the quiet around them, "Man, this is making me nostalgic... though I tended to sleep more in trees than on the ground."

"You didn't worry about falling?" Yusei asked curiously, rubbing at his neck after he finished stretching his arms and back.

"I'm good at picking out stable branches, and I've been sleeping in trees since my middle school days," Judai replied with a prideful smile, "I never worry about falling."

Yusei hummed at that, trying to blink away some of his tiredness. Maybe Judai really was onto something with his cat analogy, because the sun shining down the way it was made him want to grab Judai and go back to napping. It was just so nice and _warm-_

"You were going to show me the viewing area next, right?" Judai asked, pulling Yusei out of his thoughts and back on-track with what they were doing.

"Right, let's go," he said, threading their hands together once again as he started walking towards the stairs; moving around helped him wake up a lot faster, luckily, so by the time they got back inside the hallways he was awake and alert again.

"Quick question," Judai said, giving him a curious look, "You're coming to watch, right?"

"Of course I am, that's not even a question," Yusei answered, stopping for a moment to pull Judai closer so he could lean down and kiss him.

Judai hummed happily into it, latching onto Yusei quickly to make sure he couldn't pull away before he was satisfied; he made a slight noise of surprise before closing his eyes and going with it.

It's not like Yusei would ever deny longer kisses, after all, and Judai was quite addicting.

"Alright, _now_ we're ready to go," Judai breathed out, pulling away and pecking Yusei on the cheek with a silly grin before he could straighten back up.

Yusei let out a huff in amusement, complying and leading the way again before teasing, "Are you sure you're ready to go?"

"As much as I'd love to make-out with you in the hallways, I _am_ actually interested in seeing the rest of this place," Judai responded, rolling his eyes slightly and laughing happily, "We can do it afterwards, though?"

"Uh huh, we'll see," Yusei replied, merely giving him a smile. To his surprise, Judai looked off to the side as he usually did when he was embarrassed, a light pink dusting his cheeks as he walked.

Well, he'd take his victories when he could, even if he didn't quite know what he did - it was always nice to be the one embarrassing Judai for once instead of it being the other way around.

After a short elevator trip to the top floor, they finally reached the viewing platform. It overlooked the arena with a few extra sections jutting out so that people could get a clear view of the action without having to look at too much of the stands, though these sections also doubled as shade providers for the area below them. It was still walled-in with the rest of the stadium though as the outer wall went past the platform and curled over it, though there were some windows built in on that side so people could look out at the rest of the city if they wanted to.

"How do people see that far?" Judai wondered, looking over the inner fence and down at the arena, "It's so far down that all the people would just look like ants."

"They don't, they look at the huge screens propped up around the walls if they want to see what's happening in the duel," Yusei said, pointing out some of them as he spoke, "High-quality screens, too. Most people come up here for the cooler air and the space since the crowds are... well, you know how crowds can be."

"Yeah, I can understand that one," Judai sighed, leaning against him as he continued to look over the place, "It's weird to think that all those empty seats down there are going to be filled with people. The last tournament location was barely a quarter the size of this place, so I can't really use it as a judge of how loud the stands will be."

"It's just one of those things you're only able to know in the moment," Yusei agreed, nudging his side to bring his attention to him so he could give him a reassuring smile, "Like I said, you'll have time to get used to it without being the main focus - you'll be fine."

"You're right, besides I don't think Yubel or Haou will let me think too much about it," Judai smiled back, squeezing his hand tighter in thanks, "Those two get real talkative when it comes to duels, so they'll probably distract me from it if worse comes to worst."

A peaceful silence fell over them as they continued to look out, enjoying the soft breeze and the warm sun.

... _Dammit_ , Yusei thought - he'd paid attention to the warmth and now he wanted to nap again. So much for waking up, not even the cool wind could help him out of this state it seemed.


	102. Spicy Food

**_4/12/19_**

" _You_ _planned this_ ," Jack hissed out the second they returned, turning around in his chair to growl at them. They'd gotten back before Crow had it seemed, so they'd get to be the ones to face Jack's initial wrath.

"I asked them to," Martha glared at him, giving him a light smack to the back of the head in admonishment, "Now, pay attention to the rest of this. If you can't answer my questions about it we're going over the whole lesson again."

Jack grumbled but complied, crossing his arms with a huff as Martha jumped right back into lecturing him about job structure and management like nothing had happened.

"Let's go start on dinner," Yusei whispered into Judai's ear, smiling at the small nod he received in return and tugging him along by the hand to the kitchen. They both made sure to give Martha a smile and a short wave before they entered Jack's line of sight so that they didn't accidentally make him any angrier - at least he was actually listening to her, which was better than any of them had been able to achieve with him.

"Can I just say that that's hilarious?" Judai said quietly with a grin once they were safely inside the kitchen, "Because that right there was and is _hilarious."_

"If there's one person in the world that can get Jack to get his shit together, it's Martha," Yusei agreed, barely holding back an amused snort at how Judai was biting his lip to hold back his laughter. He raised an eyebrow at him instead, which only made Judai grin wider and have to bring a hand up to cover his mouth just in case he started laughing.

"Come on, what should we make? We've got some time before those two are done, so we can make just about anything," Yusei asked, opening the fridge and grabbing a soda - he was in the mood for something cold and he needed the slight bit of caffeine it contained because that little bit of sleepiness hadn't worn off ever since he took that accidental nap earlier. He passed Judai one as well when he noticed his eyes lit up at the sight of the drink, getting a peppy 'thanks' in return before said can was popped open and chugged down.

"Damn I needed that," Judai sighed happily, smiling sheepishly afterwards when he noticed Yusei giving him an amused stare, "Hey man, I was thirsty. Anyway, let's just make stir-fry again, it's been a while since we had that. And it's simple."

"Sounds good to me," Yusei shrugged, finally cracking open his own drink and sipping at it. Unlike Judai, he'd actually deigned to drink from the many water fountains the Kaiba Dome contained; they had a filter system and he personally knew that janitors were specifically instructed to clean them after events (something about liability or whatever), so it's not like he didn't have a reason to. Plus, the cold water helped keep him awake, so that was all the more reason to drink it.

Judai rummaged through the cabinets while he did so, pulling out different spices and oils and asking, "Spicy or not? I'm pretty sure we've got the right stuff for a good spicy stir-fry, and- ah, here it is, we've got sesame oil too so we could use that."

"I'll eat anything, and so will everyone else," Yusei answered, humming to himself in thought before mentioning, "I haven't really eaten much spicy food either, so that'll be new."

Judai paused to turn and stare at him, though Yusei couldn't really place the expression he was wearing before a determined look took it over instead as he stated, "Well then, spicy it is. Here, lemme teach you about the stuff that goes into it..."

He blinked in slight confusion, but soon enough Yusei was too engrossed with the information being thrown at him about different spices and vegetables to think too much about it. He did find himself getting pecked on the cheek an awful lot though while they were cooking.


	103. Deck Building

**_4/13/19_**

Judai hummed, looking down at his cards that he'd spread across the bed in their room - not the kitchen table because, well... he had far too many cards for that to work. As it was, he was trying to decide just what deck he wanted to take to the tournament.

"Neo-spacians?" Judai mumbled to himself, Yubel floating curiously by his side for once, "I could do your full deck though..."

"It's up to you, though I do quite enjoy it whenever you use me in duels," Yubel said, a pleased smile forming on her face, "It's always entertaining to see people's reactions to losing to me. Remember that guy from the last tournament? With the gorilla? _Hilarious_."

"...Okay, that _was_ pretty funny," Judai admitted with an amused sigh, "I'm just worried because this is the pro-leagues, right? Which means people will have a lot more tricks up their sleeves."

"So? The entirety of your dueling style consists of having more tricks and flexibility than your opponent," Yubel pointed out, raising an eyebrow at him questioningly, "You usually mix my specific deck with the Neo-spacians for that exact reason."

"It's- It's more like if your effects get negated, I usually don't have an answer for it," Judai explained, frowning as he looked back down at his cards again, "We've talked about this multiple times before, remember? There's not anything I can play that'll help with that while not slowing down the rest of the deck if I draw it."

Yubel frowned as well at the reminder, letting out an annoyed huff as they both fell silent and tried to think of something to do.

"Man, all these new monsters really make this difficult," Judai groaned after a while, half-tempted to just flop down on top of all his cards just so he could become one with the bed and forget about this for a while, "There's so many more negates now too, which really sucks for fusion... monsters..."

Wait, if the issue was about the versatility of decks and their ability nowadays to negate things, and this in itself was caused by the fact that synchro monster were easy to summon, then-!

"That's it!" Judai exclaimed, quickly moving over across the room to grab a box he'd nearly forgotten about from the closet - they were the hundred or so booster packs that Haou had won at the arcade that one time, and if Yusei was to be believed (and really, when wouldn't Yusei be believed?) then they contained a lot of the staple cards from this era.

Which meant _negates_ , and most likely a bunch of cards that activated in response to synchro summons.

"Yusei!" Judai called, running out of their room with a grin and quickly gaining the attention of the other from where he was fiddling with some parts and his laptop at his work desk, "Time for a break, come open these packs with me!"

"Packs...?" Yusei muttered in response, giving him a confused look before his eyes lit up in remembrance a few seconds later, "Oh yeah, you never opened those, did you?"

"Nope! Now come on, let's go!" Judai cheered, running down the stairs and pulling Yusei into a hug that the other struggled to return considering he was still sitting and hadn't had time to put the stuff in his hands down.

"Okay, okay! Just let me finish this up real quick, I need to save this data befo-"

Judai interrupted him with a kiss, fully enjoying the fact that because Yusei was sitting down, he was the one leaning down for once. It just so happened to also come with the addition of Yusei cutely struggling to figure out what to do as he couldn't see the desk anymore to put the parts down, yet was also quickly being drowned in the kiss and oh-so clearly wanted to be able to pull him closer and down onto his lap.


	104. Tournament Morning

**_4/14/19_**

Judai grit his teeth slightly as he looked at the crowd a few days later from the parking lot, tightening his grip slightly on Yusei - it was finally time for the tournament, and he was already being faced with crowds despite not even entering the building yet. Luckily for them, there was a special lot for competitors and special guests so he wouldn't have to enter the fray just yet.

Then again, if it were up to Judai he'd just avoid them altogether, only going in when he absolutely had to. Unfortunately he'd still have to thread through the crowded hallways to get to where he needed to go, and even using the paths that Yusei had pointed out to him in their earlier visit, he'd most likely be recognized by at least one person-

No wait a minute, he could just use his shadows to hide if it got bad enough!

" _Idiot_ ," Haou scoffed at him in his mind, not bothered at all about the many people who'd be watching and entirely focused on the duels ahead of them; he'd come out the second they'd left for the Kaiba Dome and had been feeding Judai his anticipation through the link ever since alongside Yubel, which... well, it was a double-edged sword, really. On one hand it fed into Judai's overall excitement for the rest of the day, but on the other hand it also made him more anxious.

"Judai," Yusei said, getting his attention once again due to the slight strain in his voice, "Too tight."

"Oops, sorry," Judai mumbled, loosening his arms from his waist and kissing the back of his head in apology before getting off the bike. He stretched his arms up in the air and sighed, taking a deep breath and double-checking that he had everything he needed.

Deck, side deck, ID, himself... yep, everything was here.

Now if only the nerves would go away, that would be fantastic.

"Just make sure you keep taking deep breaths every once in a while," Yusei suggested, standing next to him after locking up his bike and bringing a hand up to tuck some Judai's hair behind his ear and away from his face, "You'll be fine, just focus on the duels. If it gets really bad, try to think about something calming."

"So you then," Judai smiled softly, feeling a bit better now than before and leaning his head into Yusei's hand, "I got it, thanks. You're in the champion room, right? The one that's off to the side, half-way up?"

"That's the one," Yusei replied, grinning slightly as he started to squish Judai's cheek with his thumb.

Judai pouted slightly at the treatment, though soon enough they were both laughing quietly after Judai brought his own hand up to start poking at Yusei's cheek.

Ah yes, if there were anything or anyone that could make Judai feel better so quickly, it was Yusei - his calm aura was infectious and Judai found himself calming down with every second he spent with him. It was too bad he wouldn't be able to talk to him again until after the tournament due to certain rulings that had been instated; the champion wasn't allowed to talk to any of the participants during the tournament. Apparently its initial creation was for a rather malicious purpose, which was to keep Jack from finding out most of his opponents were set-ups during his reign as champion, but the rule was kept now because people recognized that it was probably best for everyone if it didn't look like any duelists were being favored within the tournament by the champion.

Granted, at this point the whole damn city knew and celebrated the fact that Judai and Yusei were a couple, so the idea of 'not being favored' was pretty much thrown out the window and smashed into pieces. Still, the sentiment was there and any little bit that would help him stay in a positive light was something he'd take.

"Come on, let's go," Yusei said after a few minutes of playful banter, content smiles on both their faces now, "The sooner you sign in, the sooner you'll be able to hide away in the contestant viewing room."

"Aw, I wanna spend more time with you," Judai pouted, though he took Yusei's hand in his anyway and started walking towards the entrance, "I won't be able to all day! Are you still sure that I can't just like, sneak in with my shadows and stuff, no one has to know I'm there-"

"No," Yusei stated, giving him an exasperated look and tugging lightly on his arm in admonishment.

"Fine, fine, I won't," Judai conceded, an innocent grin on his face as he pulled to a stop near the entrance and glanced around at the empty space around them, "Though if I don't get to see you until tonight, then at least give me this?"

Clearly sensing his thoughts, Haou and Yubel rolled their eyes at him through the connection before cutting it off with amusement.

"What's th-" Yusei started to ask, though Judai was quick to interrupt him by dragging him down into a kiss, taking advantage of his surprise to slip his tongue into his mouth and drag an accidental moan out of him. He made sure before he did so that he'd activated his shadows just in case anyone walked into the area, wrapping around and concealing him and Yusei from view.

"We've got time, we're early," Judai stated lowly, pulling back for a moment so he could look at Yusei's flushed and startled expression appreciatively, "Let me enjoy you for a bit, Yusei."

"We're _outside-_ "

"And _I've_ got shadows," Judai grinned wickedly, guiding him backwards towards the wall of the building, "No excuses not to now, huh?"

Yusei glared cutely at him in embarrassment, and Judai couldn't help but tease him a bit more by turning them around so when they got to the wall, Yusei was the one leaning over him and seemingly pinning him to the wall.

"Oh no, you've got me! What are you gonna do, hmm?" Judai grinned, pulling Yusei's arms up quickly to be on either side of him.

"Shut up," Yusei mumbled, leaning down and smashing their lips together.

Ah yes, Judai was feeling _way_ better now - this was just the quick pick-me-up he'd been needing.


	105. Interview

**_4/15/19_**

Judai really should've expected this, considering how he'd been entered into the tournament in the first place, but he still found himself caught off-guard when he was singled out in the competitor's room by security to get ready to go on stage. He vaguely listened to the announcer outside going over a list of introductory events from behind one of the doors to the arena, waiting for his cue to go out.

" _Judai, stop biting your lip so hard or you're going to break it_ ," Yubel warned him.

Oops, he hadn't even noticed he'd been biting it - he sighed as he stopped, suddenly very aware of the slightly metallic taste in his mouth.

 _Sorry_ , he replied mentally.

" _Stop biting your tongue now, too._ "

 _...Oops?_

He winced slightly at the admonishment and annoyance that got sent to him by both of the other two, feeling a bit bad about worrying them. He couldn't help it though, as he hadn't exactly been prepared to be singled out on stage - not yet at least, not until the finals.

Remembering what Yusei'd told him earlier, he took a couple deep breaths, which helped him calm down a bit. What else had he said to do if it got bad?

Right, think about calming things, or really just anything that made him happy. He resolved himself to thinking about how lucky he was to have Yusei as a significant other, and how utterly thankful he was to him for letting him stay around and helping him have... well, have a home. This place was _home_ now.

A small smile formed on his face at the thought, his chest warming at how nice it was to think about.

" _-winner from the New Year's After Party tournament whose quick rise through the pro-leagues is unprecedented, Judai Yuki!_ " The announcer's voice yelled out, breaking Judai out of his thoughts and reminding him of where he was.

Well, now or never, he guessed. He pushed open the doors and walked out, glad that it was still fairly early in the morning so the sun wasn't too bright and hard to adjust his eyes to. The first thing that hit him was the absolute roar of the crowd, which reverberated throughout the stadium in a rumble he could physically feel; the second was the sight of the crowd, which was basically a blur of colorful dots that spread out and everywhere he could see.

It was jarring, and yet... it wasn't hitting him as hard as he thought it would, which was pretty damn relieving. Damn it, he must've been stressing out too much again and caused himself to worry for no reason.

He smiled brightly and waved to the crowd as he reached the center of the arena next to the announcer, eyeing the champion box for a second on the way there. There was Yusei, and it would seem that both Jack and Crow had been able to make it - the twins were there too, which was great for them. He could practically see Leo's excited expression in his mind, and he had to hold back a chuckle.

He squinted though when he noticed the door to the room open though, revealing Jun and Edo. What were they doing there? They hadn't said anything to him about coming to watch, let alone that they knew he was dueling in the tournament in the first place. Then again, it _had_ been announced in that first tournament that he would be dueling, so they probably just found out through that.

"Mr. Yuki, tell us- how do you feel about dueling with the pros already? You've climbed the ranks faster than anyone has in the past ten years, and it's a very impressive feat! You haven't lost yet, either!" The announcer asked, holding the microphone out for Judai's answer.

"Firstly, just call me Judai," he grinned, slowly starting to get into the crowd's hype as he felt his nerves turn into excitement instead, "As for dueling with the pros- well, I'm just as surprised as you at being moved up so quickly! I'm hoping to have some fun duels today more than anything, so I hope everyone enjoys the show!" He gave a wink at the end since he'd noticed he was front and center on some of the side screens, and to his delight this caused the crowd to cheer loudly in support.

Yeah, this definitely wasn't as bad as he thought it'd be.

The announcer took back the microphone, continuing, "Well, you're definitely a crowd favorite already! Not just that, but a favorite of sponsors as well it would seem, eh?"

Wait what? He was sponsored?! By who?! WHEN?!

" _...Aren't you supposed to be informed about this sort of thing?_ " Haou asked, amusement flooding out of him, " _Then again, it's you, so I'm not surprised things didn't happen the way they're supposed to._ "

Yubel simply cackled, confused as well but more than willing to just focus on the hilarity of it all.

"The Manjoume Group and The Phoenix Company have both sponsored you as a duelist, so you've really made a name for yourself! We'll be looking forward for some fantastic duels from you today!"

... _Those fucking bastards- they didn't tell me, damn it! No wonder they're here!_

As much as Judai appreciated the support, they could have, y'know, _told him_!

After a bit more back-and-forth and some quick, on-the-spot improvisation to explain his 'gratefulness for the sponsors' and his 'surprise at being approached for one in the first place' - ha, what a lie that one was - he barely kept himself from glaring at the champion's box as he walked off the stage.

He noted the smug smirks on the two businessmen's faces at having pulled one over him and vowed to get back at them for this somehow. At least it'd been something good in the end, but still, was this really necessary?

The thing he really kept note of, though, was Yusei's slightly-guilty, _sheepish_ smile that he gave him as he looked up. Yusei was the only one who knew he could see that far and clearly, so he _knew_ he would see him, and he wasn't even trying to hide that he'd known about this happening.

Judai was so using that 'make-him-do-anything' pass after this, damn it! Yusei was definitely _not_ getting any mercy from him this time, that's for sure.


	106. Sponsors

**_4/16/19_**

"You guys are assholes," Judai scowled a couple hours later after his second win of the day, glaring at Jun and Edo, who merely smirked at him in response.

"Aw, not even a 'Thank you'?" Edo asked, tilting his head slightly like he was at all innocent, "Judai, you wound us, truly."

"Nice save in that little interview there, Mr. 'SupremeHERO'," Jun added with a snicker, leaning on the wall of the empty room they'd managed to find, "What was it you said? Oh yes, 'I'm honored to have been sponsored by such fantastic groups! I was surprised myself when they approached me with sponsorship offers!'"

"Yeah, well, maybe if you two had _told me_ I wouldn't have had to save myself in the first place!" Judai exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air exasperatedly, "Not only that, but you told Yusei, right? What the hell did you bribe him with to get him to keep quiet about it?!"

"How'd you figure out we told him?" Edo blinked, frowning slightly in confusion, "I know he didn't tell you, or you wouldn't be asking in the first place."

"He was smiling guiltily while I was walking off the stage," Judai replied reluctantly with a sigh. He hadn't really wanted to tell them, but this was definitely worth it to know just what the hell it took to bribe Yusei of all people into keeping his silence. Granted, it was silence for something relatively positive and not harmful, but still! It was the principle of the matter!

"The fuck? You expect us to believe you can see that far?" Jun scoffed, giving him a clearly unconvinced stare. Judai simply stared back with his own deadpan look until Jun eventually groaned in acceptance, "Holy shit, you actually can. Let me guess, your hearing is insane too? Sense of smell?"

"Yes and yes," he replied, moving on quickly before they could get any more off-topic, "Now tell me, what'd you two do? Actually, why did you guys even tell him in the first place?"

"You don't exactly have a manager of any sort," Edo started explaining with a smile, though Judai was pretty sure that was because he was amused by Jun's dramatic reaction to Judai's abilities, "So we used him as your 'manager' because he's got all your info, and he agreed that having us sponsor you was a great idea. As for making sure he didn't tell you, well... we weren't actually successful in that area, to be honest. He ended up having to tell us what he wanted in exchange."

Oh boy, just what had Yusei agreed to? Judai wasn't sure whether Yusei being bribed or Yusei getting whatever he'd asked for was more worrying, because Yusei was _not_ a materialistic person (with the exception of his runner and engineering parts).

"He asked for some pretty damn expensive mechanical parts, which okay, makes sense - but then he also added on that he wanted _you_ to be able to ask for something," Jun continued for him, "So, here we are - ask away."

Okay, that wasn't nearly as bad as he thought it'd be. In fact, that was an extremely good outcome for all this - Yusei got the parts he needed for his projects and Judai would get... well, he had yet to think of what, but he'd get something at least. Just for this, Yusei had earned himself a _little_ bit of mercy later. Still though, that was a lot to agree to just to catch him off-guard like this, especially for these two of all people.

"Wait wait wait, you guys just... agreed to it?" Judai asked, looking at them in disbelief, "Was pulling a fast one on me like this that important to you?"

"It was _so_ worth it," Edo immediately answered, grinning widely, "We've got footage, and though other people probably won't be able to tell, to us your shock was clear as day the second he brought up sponsorship. That was _hilarious_."

"Oh man, and the way you managed to bullshit afterwards was _fantastic_ ," Jun said, laughing once again at Judai's misfortune, "I still can't get over how you managed to say all that with only a few annoyed twitches."

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," Judai muttered darkly, though he was laughing with them after a few seconds as well at the whole situation. It was admittedly funny, after all, even if he was the butt of the joke.

"In all seriousness though, we're... kind-of making up for lost time," Edo explained, and really, that was all Judai needed to hear to understand where they were coming from.

"I- yeah, I got it," he replied softly, clapping his hands together a few moments later and grinning, "Well, I've got just the idea on what to ask for!"

"Oh? That was fast," Jun said, and Judai couldn't help but note that he'd relaxed slightly at the topic change - guess he'd never grown out of being a dramatic tsundere after all.

"Yep! Alright, here's what I want-"

Judai was going to have fun with this one.


	107. Meeting Carly

**_4/17/19_**

Judai was pretty thankful that he wasn't unnerved by the crowd by the time quarter-finals came around, since this was when they started having only one duel at a time on-stage; it hadn't been only the final that was done that way, so it happened much earlier than he'd expected it to.

He passed the quarter-finals easily enough as his opponent got some pretty unlucky draws, judging from the way his eye twitched every time he drew during the duel. He's pretty sure the poor guy was supposed to have more in his back-row, but all he'd been able to play before Judai decimated him on turn seven was a single Mirror Force and a couple of face-downs that never saw the light of day.

No, what Judai focused more on during that bit of time while waiting for his opponent to play (he took pretty much all the time allotted per turn to play, which was... annoying after the first time it happened) was the crowd - or rather, the hordes of signs and other such things that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Only then did what everyone'd been telling him and Yusei the past few weeks really set in to his mind that they were _really, really popular_.

There were so many signs, ranging from a simple 'Go HERO!' to super decorated ones featuring Yubel and Winged Kuriboh LV10. After this tournament, where he'd actually been playing his heroes more than anything else, especially Elemental HERO Shining Flare Wingman and Elemental HERO Shining Phoenix Enforcer, there'd probably be a lot more added into those pieces. Honestly, it made him wonder if he could find fan-art of himself online.

He probably could.

He probably also didn't want to, for his own sake. People could come up with the weirdest things, and that was saying something coming from him - after all, he was fused with a duel monster and had a past reincarnation of himself in his soul and sharing his mind-space; he'd ventured through the spirit realms and seen some pretty messed up shit, and even then some of the stuff people thought up surprised him.

He was greeted by the sight of a slightly grumpy Jack Atlas once he got into the hallways again, accompanied by a girl with the biggest swirly glasses he'd ever seen in his life. Was that... really something that got made? It didn't seem very practical, could she actually see anything with those on?

As he got closer though, those thoughts were instantly wiped away.

" _She's got shadow magic on her_ ," Haou noted, " _Not much, but it's there. Like it's a remnant more than anything else._ "

" _Probably one of the people that got caught up in all the stuff that happened to Yusei_ ," Yubel mused, a bit of sympathy leaking through the connection after a few moments, " _From the way it's clinging to her though... It's like it's keeping her alive. I think it's safe to assume she was one of the people who got forced into becoming one of those Dark Signers Yusei told us about._ "

 _Should- should we say anything about this?_ Judai wondered, though he got immediate 'no's from both of them. He was inclined to agree, even if it would be right to at least inform the girl about it - after all, Jack seemed to be tolerating her and they clearly knew each other, so she couldn't be bad.

Judai would just have to ask Yusei about it later, and it was probably for the best, too.

"Hey Jack!" Judai chirped, waving as he came to stand next to the two and getting straight to the point, "Who's this?"

"Hey," Jack nodded back, stepping to the side a bit so he wasn't blocking the girl from him, "This is Carly, she's a good friend of ours and a reporter. Figured it'd be best if you met her now, seeing that there's going to be a lot of time between matches and she'll probably want an interview."

"Nice to meet you!" Carly greeted, and Judai swore her glasses sparkled as she grinned, "Jack here was just telling me about how you've never actually gone through an interview with anyone yet, I so need this! I wanna be the first to get it!"

Judai laughed at that, not having even thought about how he'd never actually been caught by a reporter yet, "Nice to meet ya too, and sure, why not? I don't mind."

"Don't let her push you into answering anything you don't want to," Jack huffed, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall, "Also, let's _not_ do this in the hallway."

"Oh! You're right!" Carly replied cheerfully, not even phased by Jack's less-than-sunny disposition, "Okay, let's go find somewhere else then!" She took off not even two seconds later, leaving them to stumble after her so they didn't lose track of each other.

"She's certainly happy," Judai mused quietly, just loud enough for Jack to hear it. He happened to look over at that moment, witnessing something he never thought he'd see.

Jack was giving her a soft look, seemingly forgetting for a moment about the fact that he was supposed to be annoyed at the world before snapping out of it and switching back to wearing the constant frown he usually sports.

But Judai had seen it clearly before it disappeared, and he _smirked_.

Jack glanced over at him and was immediately alarmed, his entire body tensing as he defensively stated, "Whatever you're thinking, it's _wrong._ "

Judai merely raised an eyebrow, his smirk growing wider by the second as he continued to stare knowingly.

"You're _wrong_."

"I distinctly remember you muttering about 'Swirly Glasses' a couple times - so this is why, huh?"

" _Shut up._ "

"Come on you guys, hurry up! I found an empty office room!" Carly called from in front of them, all the way at the end of the corridor they were in at the moment.

"We'll talk about this later," Judai conceded with a victorious smile, determined to make the most out of this juicy bit of information he'd had practically dropped into his lap.

Jack growled at him lowly, but seeing that this was a lost battle, settled with merely scowling at him distastefully instead.


	108. Thinking Ahead

**_4/18/19_**

"So how did you and Yusei meet?" Carly asked, glasses still glinting with sparkles somehow to Judai's surprise, "That's been a pretty popular question among the gossipers so far who care more about that than the actual dueling."

"Ah... we..." Judai blinked, struggling to think of something that wasn't 'oh yes, we saved the world together by hopping through time'. After a few moments he tried answering, "We stopped a card thief together?"

The blank stares of disbelief he got in return told him that they weren't impressed with the lie in the slightest.

"Did you two seriously not come up with a cover story yet?" Jack asked, his face strained in a way that made Judai believe that had he been anyone else, he'd be face-palming right now.

"Okay, to be fair we didn't exactly think we'd need it already!" Judai defended, crossing his arms and pouting slightly at the disapproving look, "Plus, we hadn't... actually thought about the fact we'd need one in the first place."

Jack groaned in response, "You two are _idiots_! We've been telling you for how long that you're in the public eye?! How did you not think about this even once?!"

"Okay, let's just calm down for a minute," Carly piped up, still wearing a smile despite everything and patting Jack on the arm soothingly, "What's this about needing a cover story? I'll help out but I need all the details first, then I can make sure that what we come up with is what I get published."

"Well, you'd find out eventually anyway since you're part of the group, so might as well," Judai shrugged, not at all bothered with telling her, "The gist of it? I time-hopped twenty years to get here."

Carly lit up at that, saying, "Oh! You must've been one of the people Yusei worked with to beat that one guy he told us about that was stealing people's cards across time! He didn't tell us much about you though, just that you were an excellent duelist and that you both dueled with the King of Games!"

"Well, that certainly makes explaining that easier," Judai grinned, "You've pretty much got the whole story right there. Anyway, I'm here now, and Yusei managed to get all my information changed so it didn't look out of place, so... yep, that's it. Just uh-need a cover story now I guess."

Carly hummed to herself in thought for a few moments before stating, "Well, we should probably wait until Yusei can be here too since he'll need to know it, plus he'll be able to add in anything we might miss. For now though, we can work on stuff about just you!"

"Start with his cards," Jack suggested, and to Judai's amusement was half-distracted by the way Carly was hanging off his arm at this point - at least she'd gotten him to calm down pretty fast, no wonder Crow had mentioned calling her whenever he needed Jack out of the house.

"My cards?" Judai frowned, "Oh right, makes sense. My Elemental HERO's are an old archetype at this point, I forgot."

"The main one's aren't the problem, it's the ones that aren't on any card lists anywhere," Jack replied, reluctantly prying Carly off himself so he could sit down on the single couch in the room, "Like that Elemental HERO Neos card of yours."

"I haven't used him yet, though."

"But you plan to, right?"

Judai sighed but nodded, not liking that he'd have to come up with an explanation for owning the cards he did just so he could use them but knowing that he'd have to anyway, "I've... got a whole archetype of cards that are unique to me revolving around him."

"An entire archetype?" Jack asked incredulously, raising an eyebrow at him, "Seriously? Good luck with that, it's bad enough that you used that one card last time - Yubel, I think? Most people didn't think about whether that was an actual printed card, but that one's something you'll have to explain too. That's a lot of cards you'll have to explain having."

"We'll come up with something, don't worry," Carly reassured them both, flipping her notepad to a clean sheet and spinning her pen with a grin, "Now, shall we get started? We've got an hour and a half until your next duel, so let's see if we can't come up with anything in that time."

Judai groaned miserably at the thought but complied, plopping down into a chair at the small table in the room and burying his head in it for a moment before sitting up with a determined look, "Alright, let's do this."

"Oh no, you have to _think_ , whatever will you do?" Jack teased him with a huff of amusement at his antics.

"Oh no, I'm being insulted by the great Jack Atlas, whatever will I do?" Judai retorted, rolling his eyes in response.

"Oh! Jack, could you do us a favor and go get some water from the vending machines outside?" Carly asked suddenly, turning towards him and holding a hand up to her face with a sheepish grin, "I completely forgot that I left mine in the van!"

"Dumbass," Jack groaned, though he got up anyway and left, "Fine, I'll be back in a minute. You owe me, though."

Judai stared as he left with barely a fight, still not quite believing what was happening in front of his eyes. Well, at least he had some rather solid proof of Jack liking her now - if that wasn't proof, he didn't know what was.

Once the door closed, he turned to her with a raised eyebrow and a wicked grin, "You totally know."

"It's super obvious," she replied, her own grin just as wicked as his.

"That's _hilarious_ , I hope you know."

"Oh, I know, trust me. Crow laughs at it nearly every time I come over and get Jack to do stuff he'd never do otherwise. I'm just waiting for him to finally get his act together one day, and I plan on embarrassing the crap out of him the day he finally asks me out."

Judai laughed at that, "Y'know, I think we're gonna get along just fine! Here, give me your phone number before he gets back - I'll give you fodder whenever he does something dumb that he wouldn't admit to otherwise."

Carly cackled, quickly pulling out her phone and swapping numbers.

 _I like this girl!_ Yubel cackled as well, amusement pouring out of her, _And she's a reporter? That makes all of this even better! Just think about all the gossip and rumors she must know about._

Huh, that was true - to be honest though, Judai was just glad to have found a kindred spirit who also enjoyed embarrassing the shit out of their significant other.


	109. Break Before Finals

**_4/19/19_**

" _And with that, Judai Yuki moves on to the finals! Now, after a ten minute break we'll be seeing who he gets to face - will it be the new-"_

Judai sighed in relief, grabbing his cards out of the stand and putting them back in his deck holder before wandering off the stage. That'd been a relatively close match, considering his opponent had just the right monsters with just the right amount of attack points to make it so his monsters couldn't get the Skyscraper buff when they attacked, but he'd managed to pull through with a well-timed Winged Kuriboh LV10 again. It hadn't been nearly as flashy as the last time, but it opened the field and let him finish off his opponent, so that was all that really mattered to him.

"Judai!"

He blinked when he heard his name being called from down the hallway - man, everyone seemed to like meeting up with him right after his matches. Not that he was complaining of course, since it let him pass the time between matches much quicker while not having to just sit around anxiously - for instance, he and Carly had managed to come up with a reasonable explanation for at least Yubel and some of his unique Elemental HERO's, though they were still stumped on how to pass off his Neo-Spacians. Before that, Edo and Jun had joked around with him like old times and told him about the sponsorship stuff and how it worked in the process.

Looking up, he saw that it was Akiza, flanked on both sides by the twins.

"Hey guys, you liking the matches so far?" He greeted, laughing when Lua was quick to run at him and start ranting about the duels.

"You pulled out Winged Kuriboh again, that was so cool! And then you have those super cool heroes, and your Flame Wingman went and destroyed the guy's super strong monster, and-"

"Lua, calm down! He's probably pretty tired from dueling all day, and he's still got another match to go," Luka reprimanded with a frown, pulling her brother back a bit so he wasn't right in Judai's face.

"It's alright, I'm not doin' that bad," Judai said, patting both of them on the head with a smile.

"Here," Akiza said, holding out a can of soda to him, "Figured you might want the caffeine. I was going to get you a coffee but Yusei told me you weren't a fan of it, so I got this instead on the way in - I only just got here right before your duel after all."

"Thank you!~" Judai sang with a grin, taking the drink and cracking it open eagerly, "So, you know how my day's been, how's yours?"

Akiza groaned slightly at the reminder, stating, "Group project, it sucked but today was the only day everyone was available to work on it."

"Well, at least you're here now," Judai replied sympathetically, letting out a content sigh after taking a sip from the nice, cold drink, "And you two? I know Lua's been enjoying the duels, what about you Luka?"

"Oh! I've been enjoying them a lot!" Luka answered, perking up slightly at the attention, "I-It's much nicer being able to watch from the room. Last time we watched a tournament in person, we had to watch from the stands and we got stuck behind some really tall people..."

"I understand that one completely," Judai said, nodding seriously in agreement, "Darn tall people, always blocking our view! And making fun of us!"

Lua and Luka giggled at him while Akiza cracked a smile in amusement at his antics, raising an eyebrow and asking, "Aren't you shorter than everyone you live with?"

"Don't remind me," Judai pouted, holding a hand to his heart dramatically and sniffling, "It's not fair! They can reach the top shelves and I can't, and do you know where they keep the extra supplies in the main storage closet? In another cabinet inside it, on the _top shelf!_ I had to get a new toothbrush once and ended up having to get Yusei to help!"

"M-maybe you should get a footstool?" Luka suggested innocently, tilting her head in question.

"Oh yeah! We have those for the kitchen so we can reach the sink, it's super useful!" Lua exclaimed, grinning at him with an equally innocent face.

Oh, how precious these two twins were. If only they realized that what they were saying only made Judai feel worse, because he didn't want to have to need a footstool to get basic supplies from the closet! Or for anything like that!

...Then again, like he's mentioned before, he actually liked being short because then Yusei was really tall to him and it was a nice feeling to be wrapped up in bear hugs and cuddled at night.

Still, he couldn't help but sulk at the principle of it all, much to the twins' confusion and Akiza's amusement. They pat him on the back and started leading him down the corridor back to the waiting room while he pouted and continued to sip at his soda to make himself feel better.


	110. Spring Blossoms Tournament Final

**_4/20/19_**

" _Judai's managed to hit his opponent hard with Flame Wingman, burning away Sato's Naturia Hydrangea for a whopping 1900 points of damage! He's making a comeback from behind - Sato's life points are now down to 3300, while Judai's are still at 1200!"_

Judai counted his blessings at the fact that his finals opponent was playing a Naturia deck, since he'd actually played against the archetype before thanks to the VR game and had a fairly good idea about how the deck worked and what the stronger Synchro monsters were capable of doing.

As it was, he had Flame Wingman on the field and a set Wroughtweiler to get back a Polymerization later, and a couple face-downs just in case to make sure Wingman didn't get blown away. His opponent had out Naturia Forest, which made him really, really glad they hadn't been able to Synchro Summon out that one monster he remembered from the game that could negate spells - otherwise, he wouldn't have Flame Wingman on the field right now since his Polymerization wouldn't have worked, plus his opponent would have a free extra monster in their hands. Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to get rid of the Naturia Mantis that was still on the field, so that was still free for the other guy to use.

What was the guy's name again? Sato?

 _"Have you not been listening to the announcer say it every two seconds?_ " Yubel asked amusedly.

" _Who cares about his name, he's going to lose anyways - look at that hand you've got and that back row, you win next turn guaranteed,_ " Haou said, and Judai could practically feel his pride leaking off of him.

 _He's still a respectable opponent, come on,_ Judai replied, slightly exasperated but seeing where Haou was coming from.

 _"He didn't manage to summon the right monsters, it could've been way more challenging,_ " Haou retorted, giving a miffed sniffle as Judai got the impression of him crossing his arms, " _Unless he somehow manages to get out that one Synchro monster you were thinking of he's screwed, which he won't be able to even if he tries._ "

"Draw!" His opponent yelled, pulling out a card from his deck and barely glancing at it before pulling out another card from his hand, "Alright, here we go! I summon Naturia Cherries to the field, and they're a tuner monster!"

Judai watched on, his ever-present, relaxed grin still there like it had been the entire day when he was dueling. He found it annoyed his opponents, which was always a plus since it's not _his_ fault that they all can't have fun with a duel - at least he'd had a few matches today where they'd actually been playing and enjoying for what the game was.

Sheesh, it's like they thought you couldn't have fun with the game if you went pro, which was a terrible way of thinking in Judai's opinion - thinking that way would only sap the joy out of it and make it just another thing to do for money and a job.

"I tune Naturia Mantis to Naturia Cherries to Synchro Summon Naturia Beast!"

Ah, just what Judai was waiting for! This was why Haou said the poor guy was screwed... because he was.

"I activate my trap card, Discord!" Judai chirped with happy grin, flipping over the card he'd drawn and set last turn, "Neither player can Synchro Summon!"

"Excuse me?!"

"It's also sent to the graveyard in my third end phase after its activation, but... well, let's just say I don't think we'll be getting there."

His opponent fumed at that claim, his eye twitching as he scowled down at his cards, "Fine, I set one card face-down and switch Mantis to defense position, then end my turn."

 _"How much you wanna bet that's a Mirror Force?"_ Yubel hummed.

 _"I say it's a Torrential Tribute_ ," Haou replied with a huff, " _Either way, it doesn't matter."_

"Sweet, my turn then! Draw!" Judai exclaimed, glancing at the card before smirking at his luck, "Well, would ya look at that? I activate Mystical Space Typhoon to destroy your face-down!"

"Are you kidding me right now?" his opp- _Sato_ , right, it was Sato - groaned in response, placing his set card into the graveyard.

It was neither Mirror Force nor Torrential Tribute - it was Solemn Judgement. Thank the stars that one was off the field, because Judai needed his next card to activate if he wanted to win.

"Next I activate the field spell Fusion Gate, which destroys your Naturia Forest in the process! On each our turns, this lets us Fusion Summon one monster from the Extra Deck without Polymerization as long as we banish the material monsters instead," Judai said, watching as the arena changed from projecting a peaceful forest full of various creatures and bright colors to a swirling vortex and a floor that looked like it came straight out of a computer program, "I banish my face-down Wroughtweiler and the Elemental HERO Clayman in my hand to Fusion Summon Elemental HERO Gaia in attack position! Then, I activate its effect - when it's Fusion Summoned, I can halve the attack of one monster you control and add that same amount to Gaia's attack points until the End Phase, and I choose your Mantis!"

 _Elemental HERO Gaia - 3050 ATK_

"Let's battle! Flame Wingman, attack his Mantis!"

Naturia Mantis got burned just as badly as Naturia Hydrangea had, shattering into pieces a second a later as they were destroyed.

"Now, you take damage equal to Mantis' attack points, so that's 850 damage," Judai reminded, watching his opponent's life points drop to 2450, "And now, it's time to end this! Gaia, attack Naturia Cherries!"

 _Elemental HERO Gaia - 3050 ATK vs Naturia Cherries - 200 ATK_

Yeah, that was definitely a finishing blow right there. Gaia shattered Cherries with a powerful blow, wiping out the rest of Sato's life points with barely any resistance.

"Gotcha'! That was a fun duel!" Judai winked, causing the crowd to go wild as they started chanting his name just like the last time he'd won a tournament.

Sato sighed but smiled good-naturedly a few seconds later, taking his defeat with grace, "It was - I wasn't expecting you to just straight-up ban Synchro Summons like that, but it's a good strategy considering your deck. Maybe we'll have a rematch someday."

"I'll be looking forward to that," Judai replied, gathering up his cards before getting ushered off the stage by staff so they could fix up the arena for the awards ceremony.

" _And the winner of the Spring Blossoms Tournament is Judai Yuki! He's still undefeated, even when facing off against the pros, and has proven his worth to fight with the best of the best! Everyone stick around for the awards ceremony in-"_

 _Time to find Yusei_ , Judai thought to himself as the doors shut behind him, not minding the fact that he only had fifteen minutes until he was needed back on stage.

Yubel and Haou snorted at this, though he easily ignored it in favor of slipping past people in the hallways and making his way towards the champion room.

" _Of course, the first thing you think of after winning a huge tournament is 'Where's my boyfriend, dammit?',"_ Yubel teased, doing her best to poke at him in the back of his mind.

" _He's like a lost puppy at this point,_ " Haou added on amusedly.

Yeah no, Judai was definitely ignoring them - also, damn it, he was not like a dog at all! He much preferred Yusei's comparison of him to a fox.

...Okay, maybe he wasn't ignoring them that much, but he blamed his inability to on dueling all day and using up all his mental power on that. He was pulling Yusei into bed to sleep as soon as they got home, that's for sure.


	111. Easter Bunnies

_**4/21/19**_

"Yusei."

Yusei looked up at the call of his name, giving Judai a smile as he walked in the room, "Welcome back." He watched as Judai put down the box he was carrying on the bed with a huff, turning to flash him a bright grin.

"Thanks!" Judai replied, clapping his hands together as he walked over to pull Yusei up into a hug, "Also, happy Easter!"

"Ah- I forgot, that's this weekend, huh?" Yusei blinked in surprise, "Happy Easter to you too."

Suddenly Judai tightened his grip on him and dragged him towards the bed, sitting him down next to the box and leaning over him with a foxy grin; instantly Yusei was on high-alert, though he'd already resigned himself at this point to knowing that whatever came next would happen no matter what.

Clearly, Judai had planned something. It's not like Yusei hadn't noticed that he'd locked the door on the way in, after all.

"I'm using that pass now," Judai murmured lowly, using one hand to brush a bit of Yusei's hair out of his face before turning to rummage through the box.

Yusei looked on warily as he pulled out... bunny ears.

"What."

"Aw, come on, you're just so cute and it being spring got me thinking!" Judai pouted, waving the black headband back and forth and making the ears flop around in the process, "I even bought one for me just so you didn't feel left out and could see me in one! And I'm using the pass so you have to do it!"

Yusei felt his face heat up, eventually letting out a reluctant sigh, "Fine, just... just put it on. How long do I have to wear it?"

"As long as I want, obviously" Judai grinned happily, humming as he put it on Yusei's head and poked at it until he was finally satisfied. He leaned back and just... stared at him for a few moments with an extremely elated smile on his face, and Yusei swore his eyes were sparkling.

"...Put yours on at least," Yusei reminded him, unable to hold the stare any more and looking away with reddened cheeks, "You said you would."

"Oh yeah, okay," Judai replied, seemingly snapping out of his trance and pulling the other set, a pair of brown ears, out so he could put them on as well. He gave Yusei a wink once he did, an ear flopping in his face lightly as he did so and asking, "So? How do I look?"

Yusei suddenly understood Judai's want to see him in these ridiculous ears, because damn, Judai was _cute_ with those on. He finally managed to relax thanks to this, letting himself un-tense as he answered with a small smile, "Cute."

"Not as cute as you are though," Judai immediately retorted, swinging Yusei up and off the bed and causing him to squeak before sitting down himself so that he could put Yusei in his lap, "Look at you, your face is all red again and now you've got these cute bunny ears flopping around, too."

"I feel ridiculous still," Yusei muttered, quickly having to put his arms around Judai in order to keep his balance. Granted, Judai had a pretty strong grip on him so he wouldn't let him fall anyway, but he felt slightly better having the extra anchor.

He didn't have much time to think about it more though since Judai dragged him down for a rather intense kiss, a hand threading roughly through his hair to push him closer considering the height difference. Immediately, Judai took advantage of his surprise to push a tongue in his mouth and deepen the kiss, and Yusei couldn't help the noise he made as his head started to feel slightly foggy, all other thoughts evaporating with the feeling.

He panted slightly as they pulled apart a few minutes later, and he was sure that if his face hadn't been red before, that it was fully flushed now. As it was, he got a nice view of Judai's own face being flushed pink as well, and the sight was enough to erase any embarrassment he might have felt.

And then, Judai pulled out a marker and smirked in that same mischievous way as before, and Yusei nearly leaned down to smother it with a kiss again just so that he couldn't make him do anything more embarrassing than what he'd already forced upon him.

"You're missing the whiskers, Yusei~" Judai sang, eyes lighting up dangerously as he uncapped the marker, "Now, hold still - you wouldn't want me to mess up, now would you?"

Yusei's eye twitched as he felt the marker start to scratch at his cheeks lightly - damn it, Judai wasn't going to let him draw whiskers on him too, was he?

And wait, was that permanent marker?!


	112. Hoodies

**_4/22/19_**

"Out of curiosity," Yusei asked the next morning, catching Judai while he was still half-asleep and holding onto the morning grogginess for as long as he possibly could, "What else was in that box? It was too big to just be the ah- the ears."

 _How cute_ , Judai thought sleepily as he looked up at Yusei from within his arms, _He still can't talk about it without stuttering._

Then, the question Yusei'd asked finally set it, and Judai felt a bit of energy suddenly hit him at the reminder of the other things he'd bought using a tiny (very, very tiny) portion of the prize money he'd won the week before.

"Lemme show you," Judai said, letting out a yawn before reluctantly crawling out of the warm sheets for a few seconds so he could grab the box off the desk and bring it back over. Yusei sat up while he did so, a small smile on his face as he waited patiently for Judai to settle back in again; Judai couldn't resist getting a hug from him again for a few moments, sighing happily before turning back to the box and opening it.

"I got these for both of us," Judai said, quickly finding the right packaging in the box and unwrapping the plastic from it, "I thought it'd be nice if we had something more casual, 'cause we... kinda don't, if you really think about it. And they're comfy 'cause I bought them a bit on the large side." With a grin, he held up the hoodie he'd gotten for Yusei first - it was soft, black, and had a nice, minimalist design of Stardust Dragon on the front in a pretty light blue. Judai'd been pretty happy when he found it, not only because of the design and material, but because you could make a custom size and it let him make sure it would fit Yusei well while still hanging a bit loose everywhere.

Also luckily for Judai, he'd had the jacket Yusei gave him as a base for what his size would be, so that helped a lot in keeping it a surprise.

To Judai's delight, Yusei's eyes lit up slightly at the gift, his smile growing just that little bit bigger and telling Judai that he was happy with the present.

"I like it," Yusei replied, taking it when Judai handed it over after removing the tags on it and putting it on, "It's soft, too. I've never actually worn a hoodie before, this is nice."

Judai knew he had a silly grin on his face at this point, but he couldn't help it - Yusei in an over-sized hoodie was everything he'd imagined it'd be. He'd gone straight to fiddling with his sleeves just like he'd done with his lab coat, and it was simply too adorable for this world. Best of all, he seemed to really like it, so he'd get to see this a lot more from now on, too.

"Here, this one's mine," Judai said, pulling his out and smiling happily at seeing his design be just what he wanted it to be as well. It was black just like Yusei's and had a minimalist design of Flame Wingman in place of Stardust, though his also had a simple skyscraper in the background to set the scene a bit. He pulled off the tags on his as well and put it on, turning to Yusei and asking, "So? Is mine good too?"

Yusei hummed with a nod, leaning over him to push the box off to the side before dragging him back fully under the sheets, "I don't know about you, but I feel like going back to sleep now."

"That comfy, huh? I'm cool with this," Judai chuckled, curling back into him easily and noting that having the extra padding and long sleeves added an extra bit of softness that made the whole thing feel... nicer, somehow. Maybe it was because it gave him an extra layer to grip at? Or because it meant he could bury his head into his chest a bit more?

Either way, it was a really nice feeling, and Judai sighed contently as warmth surrounded him again, Yusei's fingers threading through his hair lulling him back to sleep quickly.

Now this was what he called a good use of money.


	113. Back to Boredom

**_4/23/19_**

"Huh, never thought I'd see the day where I witnessed Yusei wearing casual wear," Crow noted idly, blinking over the railing at the sight of Yusei wearing his new hoodie and typing away at his computer.

"I figured it'd be a good change in pace for him," Judai grinned from the couch, leaning his head back to look up at him, "Look, we match too, see?" He tugged his own hoodie out by the bottom so that the design was facing straight up so Crow could see it - granted, it was upside-down, but it was the thought that counted.

Crow hummed good-naturedly, standing back up from leaning over the railing so he could come downstairs instead, pulling over a chair so he could sit across from Judai, "So anyway, I'm guessing Yusei's back to work?"

"Yeah," Judai sighed, looking over along with Crow at him - Yusei was in his own world yet again, completely oblivious for the most part to the things happening around him. He continued, saying, "They sent him a bunch of stuff to look over and start working on. I caught a glimpse of it, but really, it was all a bunch of random nonsense to me."

"Yusei's definitely the computer genius here," Crow snorted, smiling fondly as Yusei sub-consciously grabbed the coffee mug next to him and drank while not even looking away from the screen for a second, "I may know my way around duel runners and household appliances pretty well, but computers and stuff? No way in hell."

Judai hummed in agreement, flopping over sideways on the couch after a moment and sighing, "Well, I'm really bored, so if you wanna play cards or a board game or something I'm _completely_ down."

"I dunno, tell me - how good's your luck compared to Haou's?" Crow asked, raising an eyebrow while quirking a grin at him, "Because I'd like to have a chance, at least."

Judai startled ever so slightly at the casual mention of Haou, still not quite used to anyone except him and Yusei knowing that he even existed in the first place. It was... rather nice, to be honest, to have someone else recognize his existence though, let alone recognize that he was a separate person from him - he just wasn't used to it after keeping it a secret for so long.

Based on the little bit of emotion that he felt pop up in the back of his mind, Haou felt the same, though he'd definitely never admit it out loud.

"I'll have you know my luck is not luck, it's _skill_ ," Judai joked, chuckling slightly when Crow rolled his eyes dramatically, "Anyway, why don't we find out in a duel?"

"I'm always down for a duel," Crow replied, pulling his deck out of the deck holder he happened to be wearing at the moment, "I've been wanting to duel you for a while anyway. You and Haou both, I suppose, since your decks are different."

"Well, technically I can use his deck, but I usually leave it to him to use," Judai said, sitting up with a huff and grabbing his deck off the table to shuffle it - he'd been going through and updating his Neo-Spacians a bit earlier, so he happened to have it on hand, "Besides, his deck's not really my style. Plus, I just updated this one so I need to test it out and make sure I didn't mess it up at all."

"Is that the one you used in the tournament?" Crow asked curiously, shuffling his own deck as well.

Judai shook his head, answering, "Nah, it's something you couldn't have seen yet. Unique archetype, can't really use them in public yet until I come up with a reason for owning the cards - Carly's helping me out with that one though, so I'll probably start using them eventually."

"That's right! You met Carly, huh?" Crow grinned wickedly, "Isn't _it_ hilarious?"

Judai took note of the emphasis on 'it', realizing that Jack was just upstairs and could come barging out of his room at any moment and overhear them,before matching his grin with his own and replying, " _It_ is indeed hilarious, we traded numbers so I can text her the stuff that he won't tell her."

Crow laughed at that, "Figured you two would get along well. Anyway, a unique archetype, huh? Can't wait to face it."

"Can't wait to use it again," Judai admitted, giving his deck a fond smile before looking back up, "Alright, let's duel!"


	114. Forced Break

**_4/24/19_**

"I activate Miracle Contact, which lets me shuffle Neos and Grand Mole back into the deck from the Graveyard to Special Summon Elemental HERO Grand Neos from my Extra Deck," Judai said, earning a groan from Crow as he realized he was screwed... again, "Then his effect lets me return one monster you control to your hand, so I choose your Silverwing."

Which was obvious, because it was the only monster Crow had on the field.

"Yeah no, I lost again," Crow sighed, though he was grinning despite the losses, "You put up a tough fight no matter what deck you're playing, huh?"

"So do you, though," Judai replied, gathering up his cards and putting them back in order, "Those Blackwing monsters are definitely tricky to play against - you got out a Synchro monster on your first turn with them because of all the Special Summoning you were able to do."

Unfortunately they couldn't do much against the versatility of Judai's Neo-Spacians, but really, there weren't too many decks out there that did. A well-placed Heavy Storm or Mystical Space Typhoon would mess him up, but most people seemed to play archetype specific support cards in this time alongside things like Torrential Tribute - instead of clearing the field, they were intent on making sure things never hit the field in the first place.

"I think that's enough dueling for now, should we go drag Mr. Computer over there out of his mind?" Crow asked, sharing a mischievous grin with Judai.

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Judai replied chirpily, "How do you wanna do this?"

Crow hummed in thought, leaning back in his chair for a moment before musing, "We could literally drag him? Grab him from the armpits, pull him back?"

"No no, better idea! What if we just grab the chair instead?" Judai suggested, sitting up quickly in excitement, "Just pull the whole thing up with him still in it, he won't know what hit him!"

"The thing's got metal rollers on it though, if we're not careful we'll just end up hurting ourselves-"

"Then we just don't hurt ourselves. Simple, right?"

Crow gave Judai an exasperated look, rolling his eyes before shrugging and giving off a sigh, "Well, I guess we just go with that, then. What do we do after we pick him up?"

"Eh... let's carry him up to Jack's room, barge in and see what the guy's even been up to for the last two hours," Judai said, standing up and stretching out his arms, "We gotta get Carly down here soon, seriously. Actually, now that I think about it, has Jack applied for any more jobs after Martha came and gave him the talking-to of his life?"

"He has, he's just waiting for responses," Crow replied, looking up in thought, "Actually, I'm pretty sure he got one back recently and they wanted him to come in for an actual interview, so we'll have to see how that goes. Hopefully Martha got it through his head that he can't just argue with the interviewers if he really wants to get a job and get paid."

"Hopefully," Judai agreed, shaking his head slightly as he remembered just how many times Jack had failed an interview, "I still can't believe he got himself rejected so many times, that should be a record at this point."

Crow snorted at the reminder, shaking his head as well before nodding towards Yusei and saying, "Well, should we get started, then?"

Judai just laughed lowly in response, nodding his head as a mischievous gleam entered both their eyes and they quietly stood right behind Yusei. Judai held up a hand, counting down from three once Crow nodded in confirmation; they both hauled the chair up into the air, Yusei still on it and startling badly, starting off towards the stairs while being careful not to hit the chair legs.

"G-Guys?!" Yusei stuttered out, "What the hell, let me down!"

"Nope, time for a break!~" Judai sang happily, making sure he held up the chair at the same height as Crow. He had to hold his arms up higher because of this, which was... slightly demotivating to realize, but funny to him regardless. He turned the knob for Jack's door just as Crow kicked out with one of his legs at it, badly startling the blond inside and earning them a slight scream.

"What the- Are you two being serious right now?!" Jack exclaimed, an eyebrow immediately starting to twitch as he looked at the scene in front of him.

Judai and Crow merely smiled as they put the chair on top of the bed, leading to an outraged cry from Jack at his bed being messed up so much and Yusei going to get up only to freeze as he inevitably felt the chair's balance shift due to the mattress underneath it.

Causing chaos was such a fun thing to do, therefore, chaos made great breaks, right? Judai thought so, at least.


	115. Aftermath

**_4/25/19_**

"Ah... we probably should've been a bit more careful," Judai mused later, handing out ice packs to the other three who were in various states of disarray across the living room.

"No shit," Jack groaned from his chair he'd grabbed from the kitchen, swiping the ice pack away from him quickly once he held it out and putting it to his side where Crow'd tackled him and he'd hit his desk, "You two are fucking idiots."

"Seconded," Yusei muttered, just loud enough to be heard by everyone else. He was sprawled across the couch and holding a hand up to his head, wincing at the cold of the ice pack when Judai pressed it into his hand to take it.

Judai laughed sheepishly, making sure he wasn't too loud, "It was Crow's idea?"

"Oh don't even start with that, it was _your_ idea to pick the whole chair up," Crow scowled, back once again in the chair he'd pulled up before so he could duel with Judai, "All I said was that we needed to drag Yusei away from his computer - you took it too literally, though!"

"Okay okay, so _maybe_ I was the one that came up with it," Judai admitted, though he was still grinning at this point as he continued, "You're the one that knocked down the chair, though, and Yusei with it."

"Jack pushed me!"

"Oh, so now you're blaming me?! You two are the ones at fault!"

" _All of you, shut up._ "

Everyone fell silent at once, staring at Yusei with varying levels of wariness. The slightly-awkward silence continued for a good while, consisting of Yusei covering his face with one of the couch pillows whilst the other three shared a look; Jack glared at them and gestured with a scowl at Yusei, telling them to fix their shit before they made him worse.

Because, although Judai hadn't personally gotten to witness it yet, apparently when Yusei got legitimately upset and reached a breaking point, it was _bad_. Jack and Crow had tried to tell him a story about one of those times, but apparently it was a terrifying enough experience to make them forget half of what happened because they'd blocked it out - basically though, they'd teased and pushed him around a bit too much when they were children one time, and about a week into it Yusei finally snapped and made their lives a living hell in the most round-about ways possible.

Honestly, that just made Judai love Yusei even more though. How adorable was that, that he kept his nerdy, science-loving brain even when he was super mad at someone?

Right now though, he did feel pretty bad about being the reason Yusei'd gotten injured in the first place via getting shoved off the bed by a stumbling Crow and smacked in the head by the chair that fell after him, so he wasn't going to try and make this any worse. Unfortunately it'd happened the one second Judai glanced away from him, so he hadn't been able to catch him or the chair with his shadows, which made him feel even worse.

"...I'm sorry," Judai said quietly, rubbing the back of neck nervously, "We should've stopped when you said to stop."

Crow agreed, mumbling, "Yeah, that was pretty shitty of us. Sorry."

"...It's fine," Yusei replied, voice muffled by the pillow he refused to move away from his face, "Just... think twice next time, damn it. Be glad it wasn't a concussion."

All three of them slumped slightly in relief - disaster had been averted.

"Does anyone want a drink?" Judai said a minute later, not wanting to just stand awkwardly in the middle of the room anymore, "I'll go get it if you want."

"Water," Crow replied.

"Same," Jack said, which surprised Judai because he was expecting him to ask for coffee - maybe he just didn't think Judai would make it the right way? Eh, that was probably the reason - Jack was super picky after all, especially when it came to his coffee.

"Painkillers," Yusei said, and Judai couldn't have stopped the snort he made if he'd tried. A single blue eye poked out from under the pillow and gave him a scathing glare, making Judai smile sheepishly in apology.

"Sorry, sorry, I'll go get it now," Judai said, turning to the kitchen and getting the drinks quickly; he made sure he grabbed a soda for Yusei as well for the painkillers.

Poor guy, Judai kept putting him in situations where he ended up needing them. He'd have to make up for it later...

Later, as in when Yusei _wasn't_ glaring at him with the strength of a thousand suns.


	116. Hot Chocolate

**_4/26/19_**

Judai yawned as he took off his headset, blinking in confusion for a moment when he heard the pitter-patter of rain on the roof.

"Was it supposed to rain today?" Judai asked, staring out the window curiously before smiling slightly - he rather liked the rain due to the atmosphere it created. Plus, it meant cool weather, so that was always nice.

Actually, now that he thought about it, it'd been a few months since it last rained; he and Yusei hadn't been official the last time it'd rained, as he vividly remembered sitting on the couch and staring at the man appreciatively as he worked while thinking about his feelings for him. He still had the picture he'd taken of him, too.

Immediately, Judai's mind wandered off towards thinking about how to spend the rest of the day, since he hadn't gotten the chance to experience a rainy day with Yusei yet as a couple. It was only just after noon after all, since they'd woken up and Yusei didn't have to do any work today so they just played a bit of DDO to start off the day; their guild hall was looking pretty damn cool at this point and was filled with starry space and galaxy items, with a Stardust Dragon statue and Winged Kuriboh statue situated right in the middle. Surprisingly it hadn't taken very long to farm out the sets they needed to unlock the statues, though Judai partially attributed that to being able to tag-duel through everything - their tag-duel decks were a near-unstoppable combo at this point due to the skill allowance.

"Dunno, didn't look at the forecast," Yusei answered, shaking his head lightly after taking off his own headset and sitting up to stretch, "I was working on the updated blueprints and- well, you get the point. Didn't plan on going out today anyway, so I didn't care about it."

"Poor Crow and Jack, they're stuck out there today," Judai chuckled, looking over at Yusei with a grin, "At least Jack's indoors for an interview, Crow might be forced to work in the middle of the rain for one his repair jobs."

Yusei chuckled at that as well, shooting Judai a smile as he said, "Well, what did you wanna do now?"

Judai hummed for a few moments, going back of the quick mental-list he'd put together about what he wanted to do with Yusei before replying, "Let's get some hot chocolate first."

"Sounds good to me."

When they got to the kitchen and started pulling out the mugs, an accidental opening of the spice cabinet gave Judai a sudden idea, and he turned to Yusei with a grin.

"Ever had spicy hot chocolate?" He asked. Knowing Yusei, he'd definitely want to try it - he loved chocolate and now, as Judai'd discovered after making plenty of spicy dishes for him after that revelation that he'd never had much of them before, spicy food.

"...Spicy hot chocolate?" Yusei blinked, tilting his head in confusion with a slight frown as he tried to imagine it; Judai had to keep himself reaching out to squish Yusei's cheek because it was just... so _cute_ , damn it, just as all of Yusei's other little quirks were.

"Wanna try it? It's pretty good," Judai said, looking over the cabinet and already starting to pull out the spices he'd need for it. Not too spicy, but just enough for the taste - at least Judai had the supplies for this thanks to Edo shoving a bulk package of chocolate pieces at him so he could practice his chocolate baking and decoration skills. For what he wanted to do, he needed to make _actual_ hot chocolate, as in with chocolate and milk and stuff in a pan - powdered hot chocolate would be nasty if he tried to make it spicy.

"Sure, why not - if you're vouching for it, it's probably good," Yusei shrugged.

Judai taught him how to make it as he went about the kitchen and pulled everything together, making enough that they actually ended up with three mugs of fresh hot chocolate instead of two. Oh well, it's not like it wouldn't get drank - this was the good stuff, there's no way they'd let it go to waste.

Obviously though, before Judai put the chocolate away afterwards, he gave a little bit to Yusei and promptly dragged him into a playful kiss once he'd eaten it. This went on for a few minutes, resulting in Judai being the one backed up and sat down on the table for once as it grew more heated, before they finally broke apart with matching smiles.

"Come on, don't want the drinks to get cold after you worked so hard to make them," Yusei teased, earning a laugh from Judai.

"Yes, I _toiled_ over those drinks, thank you very much," he replied with a playful grin, causing Yusei to roll his eyes as he let Judai stand up so they could finish cleaning up the extra ingredients.

Soon enough Judai'd dragged Yusei back into their room, opening the window to let in the fresh, cool air and so the sound of the rain was easier to hear; the way the building was built, there was a little awning blocking the rain from actually going near the window, so it was safe to open it without getting the room wet. They situated themselves on the bed, cuddling in the middle after wrapping themselves with a couple blankets and sipping at their drinks while they looked out the window at the city and the rain.

"...I like it, this is really good," Yusei said after a couple tentative sips of his drink, pecking Judai on the forehead in thanks.

"Figured you would, glad you do," Judai said, smiling softly at him and leaning his head on Yusei's shoulder after a catching him in a quick kiss.

A content silence fell between them as they simply enjoyed the moment, the rain continuing to fall around them and adding to the peaceful atmosphere with every clack on the roof and splash on the streets outside as it mixed with the muted sounds of the city.

"...Love you, Yusei."

"Love you too, Judai."


	117. More Tournament News

**_4/27/19_**

Yusei'd fallen asleep after an hour or so of cuddling up inside the blankets, so Judai was careful not to wake him up as he maneuvered him to be lying down in his lap - if he'd stayed sitting up like that and leaning on Judai for too much longer, his back and neck would've been in some serious pain when he woke up, and Judai preferred not having that happen since the poor guy deserved any nap he could get. As it was, he'd managed to move both of them over slightly so he himself could lean back against the pillows while browsing his phone for anything interesting, the cool air continuing to come in and the sound of the rain making him fully relax once he'd settled.

He played with Yusei's hair softly while he browsed, scrolling past news articles about irrelevant things on his feed before finally coming across interesting to him - a Tag-Duel Tournament, and not an online one this time. He looked over the description and the prizes, noting that they seemed to be a mix of both prize-money and card packs for the most part. The champion team would get essentially get bragging rights alongside a bit of extra money to make up for not getting more card packs than anyone else in the top ten teams.

He'd have to talk to Yusei about it. Yusei had said that he'd be happy to duel with him in a Tag-Duel Tournament, so that wasn't the problem - the problem was that he wasn't sure if the other had any schedule conflicts. The tournament was set for around mid-June, and Judai knew that Yusei's work had slowly been starting to pick up the pace again; he wouldn't be surprised if Yusei had something going on that day with work, like a meeting or... something.

Admittedly, Judai had never actually had a job where stuff like that happened, so he was just going off what he'd been told by Yusei about it so far. He was a wanderer, thus any jobs he _had_ taken were temporary and pretty much only lasted a week at most unless he was hunting down a possible duel spirit in the area. Point is, he was never required to go to any meetings or really even meet deadlines since he was mainly cooking and beyond the initial 'Here's how you make this and this in this establishment!' he wasn't required to check in for stuff like that. Even now with Edo, he was simply called in and did his job, no meetings required.

" _You never have been conventional, dear,_ " Yubel mused, and Judai hummed quietly with a smile at the pride that she emitted.

"Life would be too boring if I was," Judai replied softly, having the chance to since no one else was around to listen besides Yusei, who was still asleep under his hand in his lap.

Haou didn't say anything, but in the back of his mind Judai felt him agree with the sentiment - he wouldn't have become Supreme King if he were conventional, after all.

" _Oh, also,_ " Yubel said, blinking in remembrance, " _Don't forget, if you do end up dueling you'll need that cover story ready. You'd be using Neo-Spacians in a Tag-Duel with Yusei, no doubt about it._ "

That... that was very true, actually. Because of the way the deck worked, Neos had a practically limitless amount of monsters he could fuse with, so it was a shoe-in for Tag-Duels. Plus, Judai could already think of a few ways his monsters could be used by Yusei for Synchro-Summoning and vice-versa.

Guess getting Carly to come over and help them finally make that cover story for everything was getting pushed to number one on the list of things he needed to make happen, and soon.

He bookmarked the page for later, shoving his current line of thought aside for later when Yusei was awake. For now though he kept scrolling, fully enjoying the weather and occasionally taking the time to simply admire Yusei's peaceful sleeping face.


	118. Cleaning

**_4/28/19_**

According to Yusei, he was free on the day of the tournament as long as he got ahead of his work, which was something he generally did anyways. They worked together to sign up for the tournament before texting Carly and asking when she had a free day to come over and help them figure out a cover story for everything they still needed it for; she said she was available pretty much any time in the next week, which worked well for them.

Two days later, they found themselves cleaning the apartment up the day before she was supposed to come over because _someone_ had decided it was a fantastic idea to try and upgrade some of his runner's parts by himself for some reason.

"Why didn't you just ask me to do it?" Yusei sighed, looking over the soot-covered area of the living room with a slightly despondent look on his face.

Jack scowled and looked away to try and hide his embarrassment, "It was simple!"

"Obviously not simple enough, or you wouldn't have caused a mini-explosion in our living room," Judai remarked. He found the whole thing rather funny, to be honest, because the part Jack had been working with hadn't had anything in it that could explode like that in the first place, meaning the man had added it in himself somehow. On the other hand though, he was kind-of annoyed because now they had to clean the stupid ash from the living room, and that stuff was a pain in the ass to get rid of.

" _Take a picture of it,_ " Haou suddenly said, causing Judai to blink in surprise. He felt his eagerness to make this happen, and really, Judai couldn't deny him much when he was actually happy about something for once. This budding rivalry between him and Jack was turning out to be a good thing in the long run, and not just for entertainment purposes.

He pulled out his phone and started snapping pictures of the ruined room from where they stood at the top of the stairs, grinning at the way both Haou and Yubel starting cackling wildly in response.

"Well, we should probably get started on clean... ing..." Yusei started to say, trailing off once he noticed what Judai was doing and leading to Jack looking over at him as well instead of glaring at the wall.

"You're taking pictures?!" Jack exclaimed, immediately trying to grab the phone from him, "Give that to me!"

Judai easily dodged away with a slightly maniacal laugh, continuing to take the occasional photo or two despite having all that he needed. After a minute or so of running around, he started taking pictures of Jack chasing after him instead, eventually throwing his phone up in the air and grabbing onto it with a shadow so that Jack had no way of reaching it.

"It's only fair! You and Crow have your own pictures to make fun of Yusei and I, so we get to do the same!" Judai stated, seeing Yusei nod in agreement with him from where he'd moved to lean on the railing to watch the spectacle.

"Damn you and your stupid fucking shadows."

"Oh yeah, by the way, Haou says 'Hi' and to tell you that it was his idea in the first place."

Judai wasn't expecting the tackle that came at him, and he laughed as he fell into the soot and started to grapple with Jack.

" _Switch with me,_ " Haou demanded, and Judai easily conceded, making sure wink at Yusei and blow him a kiss with a wave before falling back.

This apartment was definitely going to get dirtier from ash getting kicked up before they could start to clean.


	119. Rivalry Intensifies

_**4/29/19**_

"I'm ba- whoa, what the fuck happened?!" Crow yelled after opening the door.

Yusei just sighed, not able to blame in the slightest for the outburst - in fact, he was glad someone else was here to share his misery. He was safely curled up on the couch and out of the way, using a blanket and the Winged Kuriboh plush as a make-shift shield from the two who'd been going at it the whole day, arguing and doing stupid shit that only made the whole apartment messier.

Like glaring at each other, pulling streamers and stuff out of literally _nowhere_ , and tossing it around like they actually had any sense of decoration. Or spreading the ash around on the ground and getting it all over themselves in order to play a ridiculous game of Pictionary with it.

They'd trailed the ash into the kitchen with that one. Yusei couldn't wait to see Jack, at least, get yelled for dirtying Judai's precious kitchen so much - he wasn't entirely sure if Judai would get mad at Haou, to be honest, but he assumed he'd probably at least get a scathing remark or two. He just hoped Judai didn't turn on him at all for not doing anything to stop them, though he was sure he'd understand that he was pretty powerless to stop those two once they'd set their mind on something.

Adding to the chaos as well were the duel spirits, which Yusei had suddenly been very glad Jack couldn't see since literally all of them were cheering for Haou the whole time, including Jack's spirits as well. He'd asked Junk Synchron about that one since he couldn't understand Jack's monsters, and the answer he got... well, they were certainly Jack's monsters. Apparently they were mischievous little guys and although they loved their owner, they tended to root for his opponents because Jack needed the competition... or something along those lines.

The second Crow entered the room, his spirits joined the crowd floating in the air to figure out what was going on, and soon enough were cheering for Haou as well as they watched them attempt to build mini-castles out of popsicle sticks and hot glue.

Yusei was done at this point trying to figure out where they were getting all this stuff from. He was just glad they'd stopped moving around for a bit so he didn't have to worry about ash getting kicked up into the air.

"Welcome back. Jack tried to upgrade part of his runner and caused a mini-explosion in the living room," Yusei greeted calmly as Crow walked over with wide-eyes, taking in the ruined room.

"Okay... and the streamers? What- what are they even doing?"

"Haou."

"Oh," Crow hummed, sudden understanding on his face, "And you stayed down here?"

"...Just in case," Yusei replied, "Though I have to admit it's entertaining."

"Can't argue with that," Crow conceded, flopping down onto the couch next to him with a huff. They both watched on curiously as the two's castles slowly came together, with Haou's being much more intricate than Jack's despite getting built much faster than his in the long run.

"Done," Haou stated about fifteen minutes later, putting down his hot glue gun to the side and wiping his jacket of invisible dust.

"Me too," Jack grunted, finally looking up and over at Haou's creation. They'd agreed not to look at each other's while they were working on it so that they couldn't copy each other (or give up half-way through, in Jack's case).

"Well, I think the winner is pretty clear here," Crow drawled, looking between the two. Jack's walls were crooked and overall looked more like a church than anything else, but he had to get credit for trying at least.

"Is yours based off something?" Jack asked, one eye twitching in annoyance at the difference between the two.

Haou actually donned a proud smile at the question, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair idly as he answered, "It's based off my castle. You simply cannot compare to someone who's crafted figures and models for war-planning maps for many years."

Was it Yusei's imagination, or did a wistful look enter his eyes for a split second when he looked upon his creation?

"You have a _castle_."

"Of course I have a castle, I'm a true king unlike you, _Atlas_."

Once again they devolved into another argument, causing both Yusei and Crow to sigh and give each other an exasperated look.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I want dinner right now," Crow muttered, rolling his eyes when Haou had to use his shadows once again to hold Jack back from doing anything too stupid.

"We have to eat leftovers, the kitchen's a mess too," Yusei said, reluctantly standing up from his warm spot on the couch. Then again, he'd been thinking about getting something to eat a little bit before Crow returned, so he wasn't too sorry about it.

"Seriously? They couldn't have kept it all out here?" Crow groaned.

"Think of it this way, they'll get what's coming for them. Judai's going to be pissed about the kitchen."

"Oh shit, you're right - think he'll make Jack clean the whole kitchen by himself?"

"Definitely."


	120. How to Make Jack Clean 101

**_4/30/19_**

As Yusei had come to learn and mention many times before, a silent Judai was a very, very terrifying Judai.

And right now, he was silent. Simply staring blankly at the kitchen, taking in the sight of ash strewn across it with little pictures of various duel monsters carved in the counter and floor at random places. Almost idly, he brought one of his arms up to look at the layer covering his sleeves, his head barely moving to do so.

From his position at the top of the stairs, hiding slightly behind the railing with Crow, Yusei saw Jack look on from the middle of the living room below, a nervous look slowly starting to crawl its way onto his face. He shared a look with Crow in slight awe, since before this they'd never seen anyone but Martha be able to draw out that look from him.

Jack must've known he was in some deep shit.

A few minutes passed with no one moving, though from the slight tilts of the head Judai made Yusei could tell that he was talking with Haou and Yubel right now. Eventually though, Judai cracked the tiniest of grins and Yusei relaxed slightly, knowing that whatever came next was going to be hilarious, at least for him and Crow.

Judai pulled out his phone calmly, pulling up the camera app and taking pictures of the kitchen; from his position, his phone was just out of Jack's view, so Jack couldn't have known what he was doing - he probably suspected it, but wasn't going to move to confirm it, that was for sure. He started typing away on it after taking some satisfactory shots, though he was too far away for Yusei to be able to tell what he was doing.

Soon enough he'd put his phone away, turning around with a small smile as if he hadn't just done something suspicious, and brushing past Jack on his way across the living room and over to the stairs. He nodded to Crow before tugging Yusei with him to their room; Yusei easily abided, raising his eyebrow slightly at him in curiosity at how he continued to stay silent, even when Judai closed and locked the door behind them.

"Shhh, just wait," Judai whispered softly into his ear, pulling him back towards the door with a full-blown smirk on his face now that they were alone. He held up his phone for Yusei to look at in the meantime, showing him what he'd done while motioning for him to lean one ear against the door to listen.

Yusei must have given him one hell of an amused look, because Judai's eyes lit up immediately at his reaction, his smirk growing even wider. He nodded and let Judai put his phone away, leaning against the door next to him with his own little grin forming as they waited.

A phone rang out on the other side, and from the ringtone he could tell that it was Jack's cellphone. They listened intently as the ringing stopped, indicating that he'd answered it.

"...Carly?" Jack's voice came through, slightly muffled but still just loud enough to make out the words, "I-"

" _Jack Atlas, have you no shame? You know you're no good at anything other than riding duel runners, why in the world did you try to upgrade it by yourself?! Not just that, but why is it in your kitchen?! How do you even manage that?"_ Carly's voice rang out loud and clear despite being on the phone, which said more about the situation than anything else, really. She cut off any attempts Jack made with an ease brought about from interviewing many, many people, berating him and telling him that she was coming over tomorrow - something that was a surprise to Jack judging from the slightly panicked yell that came from him as a response.

Wait, had no one told Jack that Carly was coming over? Oops. At least it was being used now as leverage by Carly to get Jack to clean the entire downstairs for them.

"I'll help him out later, I'd feel bad if I left it all to him since it Haou was at fault too," Judai muttered, pulling away from the door with a satisfied grin before starting to tug at his dirty clothes with a sigh, "Anyway, right now I need a shower. Can't believe they continued to wrestle and play around in ash of all things, couldn't they have like... _not_ done that? I expected better from Haou, at least."

"It was entertaining to watch, at least," Yusei replied with a smile, taking Judai's jacket from him when he pulled it off and putting it on the desk chair for now, "I'll start up the washer while you're in there, you probably want your jacket back sooner rather than later."

Judai hummed, pausing for a moment to turn to him with a thoughtful look before grinning and pulling him into a hug, getting ash all over Yusei as well, "Oh no, looks like you're dirty too - guess you'll just have to shower with me."

Judai was seriously going to be the end of him one day, especially if he kept making Yusei flustered like this all the time.


	121. Struggling with Cover Stories

**_5/1/19_**

"Man, why'd you have to have a whole archetype?" Carly complained, pouting down at the paper in front of her as she scribbled out another failed idea, "Making up a cover story for how you two came to meet was the easy part, sheesh."

Judai laughed sheepishly in response across from her, scribbling out his own idea that he'd written down, "Well, it could be worse?"

"Don't jinx us," she replied, pointing her pen over at Yusei, who was busy looking up something for them on his laptop at his desk, "Depending on what he finds, you might not even be in the clear for being here in the first place. You're lucky I caught the little details for you to check."

"Okay to be fair, even if Kaiba Corp. still has records of the contest, how many people are going actually believe that I got these cards back after they were blasted into space?" Judai asked, "Let alone that I was actually born so many years ago when there's so much evidence planted now that shows that I wasn't?"

"It's not the 'regular' people I'm worried about, it's everyone else," Carly retorted, leaning back into the couch as she explained, "I know from experience that reporters and media outlets will take literally _anything_ that could make an interesting headline and then blow it completely out of proportion. Then it can get completely out of hand - conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodwork left and right, everyone trying to one up each other for views, it can have a _huge_ effect on someone's public perception."

"Yeah yeah, I got it," Judai sighed, slumping forward slightly before forcing himself to stand up and stretch, "Well, let's take a break for now and wait to see if Yusei comes up with anything we need to worry about. More coffee?"

"Yes please," Carly grinned, standing up as well and following him to the kitchen. She stopped and looked around at it, turning to him with a mischievous smile and saying, "I see that Jack followed up on his promise to clean. Thanks for sending me those pictures by the way, I'll be using this story on him for a while."

"No problem," he replied back, his own smirk forming on his face at the reminder of the previous day while he worked on refilling the coffee maker, "I did tell you I'd message you with any interesting stories about him, after all. I figured that qualified as an interesting one."

"If it's good enough to take pictures of, it already more than qualifies as interesting," Carly hummed, leaning on the kitchen table while she waited, "On another note though, Jack got the job."

"Really? I figured he'd have bragged about it the second he got the response," Judai said, blinking at her in surprise.

"Said he wanted to wait until after his first full day there. I'm assuming it's because he's convinced he'll get fired somehow on the first day, but seriously, it's not like he's being forced to socialize with people all day so he'll be fine."

"Wasn't it a hardware store or something he applied to?"

"Yeah, but specifically for doing behind-the-scenes work, not being customer service. He'll be fine."

"Let's just hope none of the people he _does_ have to work with get on his nerves, though," Judai joked, earning a snort from Carly as he finished making her coffee, "Anyway, here - one latte, and look, I even did the fancy little leaf at the top just for you."

"I hail your coffee art skills," Carly stated, rolling her eyes in amusement, "Thanks though."

Judai grabbed a soda for himself and an iced tea for Yusei, figuring that he'd probably be in the mood for a drink as well. When they went back out into the main room, he leaned over Yusei and waved the iced tea right in front of his face with a grin, making sure to touch the drink to his forehead for a second and earning a yelp at the cold for his efforts.

"Damn it Judai," Yusei mumbled, taking the drink from him with a slight glare despite the amused smile that crossed his face, "Thanks, though I could've done without that."

"You've been working for almost two hours straight, take a break now," Judai said, not sorry at all for his actions, "Did you find anything?"

"Maybe, they held a lot more contests than I would've thought they would. They were on a pretty wide-scale, too," Yusei replied, rubbing at his forehead with a frown, "It's actually pretty odd, to be honest. I might look into it more after I find the info you need about your Neo-Spacians."

"Wait, odd?" Carly asked, a slight frown appearing on her face as well in thought, "Why's that?"

"What company has wide-scale contests like that, and overlapping as well?" Yusei pointed out, and Judai could practically see the gears turning in his head again as he tried to figure out what he was missing, "A lot of them were at the same time, though they all stop suddenly in the same year. I probably wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the fact I had to search a range of years because Judai couldn't remember how old he was when the contest happened."

"Maybe they just discontinued doing that kind of stuff? Like, they shifted focus to something else?" Judai mused, though he moved on from the topic pretty quickly, "Well, you can look into it later. For now though, break time! Stop thinking so hard for like, ten minutes you gear-head!"

Carly laughed at this while Yusei gave him an exasperated look - he did obediently crack open his iced tea, though, so that was a win for Judai.


	122. Info Redacted

**_5/2/19_**

"I'm pretty sure I found it, but... all the specifics are redacted," Yusei stated later, gesturing for Judai and Carly to come over from where they were brainstorming and look at the laptop, "The winner, card names, art, all of it is missing - the only thing there is the date and the fact the cards were sent into orbit."

"Wait, really?" Carly asked curiously, turning the screen towards her so she could read over it quickly, "Whoa, you're right! That's totally _not_ suspicious at all."

"Why would it be redacted?" Judai wondered, frowning to himself as he tried to figure out a possible reason. This was straight from Kaiba Corp.'s database, so this was all the info available about it that existed (though there was probably a physical copy somewhere as well); there really shouldn't have been a reason for his personal information to be removed entirely.

Luckily for him though, his lovely gear-head seemed to be cranking through the issue, judging by how deep in thought he looked.

"...Judai, what other documents would Kaiba Corp. have on you?" Yusei asked after a minute or two, though he continued to stare at the laptop with narrowed eyes.

"Uh, I dunno," Judai blinked, trying to recall his limited interactions with the company, "Probably... Oh! Duh, Duel Academy!"

"Give me the year you applied, I want to check something," Yusei replied, quickly looking up student info for the year Judai told him. He paused partway down the list, and a quick glance at the names told him immediately that something fishy was happening.

"It's not there," Carly murmured, pointing at the screen with a finger, "It should be right there, but it's not."

"It definitely _used_ to be, I can tell you that much," Judai sighed, moving so he could lean on Yusei from behind the chair, "Check the next two years too, just in case."

Yusei did so, and sure enough, his info was just gone.

"You sure they didn't cover this too when uh... you got my ID?" Judai asked, raising an eyebrow down at Yusei with a small grin.

"I'm one-hundred percent sure," Yusei answered, scrolling through and checking a couple other things. Judai's friends all still had their info there, so that was still normal, but everything and anything about Judai that could've been listed within their profiles was gone. He already knew that none of the world-threatening stuff had been documented, but this was on a completely different level.

"What reason would someone have had to do this?" Carly wondered out loud, tapping her pencil against her notebook as she thought, "We've got a small list of people that would have the motivation to, and even then, they're all here in this time..." Suddenly she gasped, looking up at them and asking, "Can you check when these were all updated? They had to have been different before, right?"

"I can," Yusei replied, his eyes lighting up in realization, "Depending on the year, we might be able to figure out something." He quickly started working on getting the update logs, which he had to dig through for a few minutes to finally find what they were looking for - when he finally did though, pausing so they could read through, Judai immediately recognized the date, sucking a breath in through his teeth.

"You know it?" Yusei asked, looking up at him with interest.

"That's- That's only two days after I jumped," Judai stated, looking at the screen with wide eyes as he quickly pieced the answer together as to why all his info was redacted, "Only one person knew I was jumping - it had to have been Yugi. He must've thought of it after I'd already left and talked to Kaiba about it."

Yugi had agreed to file him as a missing person after he'd left, which was the only thing they'd really thought about at the time; clearly they'd overlooked something important, though lucky for Judai, Yugi was a smart cookie and had covered his ass for him even though he'd already jumped and wouldn't be aware.

Carly whistled at that, giving him an wide grin and saying, "Well, looks like you really gotta thank him for that. He just made our job a lot easier!"

"Isn't Seto Kaiba notorious for not letting anyone tell him what to do?" Yusei wondered, tilting his head curiously, "Then again, this is Yugi we're talking about."

Judai grinned mischievously as the question had brought up a lot of memories of Yugi telling him stories about the man in question, replying, "He blackmails him. Of course, it's _implied_ blackmail, this is Yugi we're talking about, but he did it a lot whenever he needed Kaiba to do something. And trust me, he has so much dirt on Kaiba it's _insane_."

"...Yugi blackmailed Kaiba," Carly repeated incredulously, staring at him for a few moments to confirm that he was serious before bursting into laughter, "O-oh man, that's gold! Pure gold!"

"I know, right?!" Judai laughed as well, "I got to listen to a couple phone-calls between them 'cause Yugi would put it on speakerphone, and every time he'd wear the most shit-eating grin as he proceeded to manipulate the entire conversation to be in his favor."

Yusei glowered at him, a look of resigned understanding washing over his face, "So that's who you learned it from."

"From the best!~" Judai sang happily, ruffling Yusei's hair as he stoically pouted at him - it was cute how Yusei attempted to keep his own smile from forming, though he ended up failing eventually.


	123. Cover Story Complete!

_**5/3/19**_

It took a few more hours of brainstorming, but they did eventually come up with something they were all satisfied with as a cover-story for Judai's Neo-Spacians. Having all the info about them cut out from existence helped ease their minds a lot and gave them a boost in determination to make it work.

Now all they could focus on was getting food as soon as possible since none of them had anything but caffeine all day, having skipped lunch in favor of getting work done; it was one less thing to worry about, especially for Judai.

Yusei knew Judai was relieved it was finally done, since he'd slumped over on him once Carly stated that they were officially done.

"How do you do this kind-of stuff all the time?" Judai asked, not bothering to move off of Yusei when he reached for his third soda of the day and chugged it.

"I mean, it's not like I do - I'm a reporter, and I try to be an honest one when I can," Carly replied, shutting her notebook after tearing out the page detailing Judai's brand-new story, "It's obviously not _easy_ , but reporting on things that have, y'know, actually happened is significantly easier than trying to create a fake scenario and report on it like it's believable." She handed the papers over to Yusei, saying, "Here, make a bunch of copies and then make Crow and Jack memorize them at least. Judai, you might want to give a few copies to your friends, though especially to the ones sponsoring you - they're going to need the story and will help a lot in keeping it straight if your cards fall under scrutiny."

"Thanks again for all this, seriously," Judai said, giving her a grateful look, "If you ever need anything, feel free to call."

Carly rolled her eyes with a smile, stating, "You're a friend now, it's no problem. Besides, you've already given me dirt on Jack that I can hold over him - those pictures have been backed up in numerous places, I'm never getting rid of them."

"Same," Yusei said, laughing slightly and causing both Judai and Carly to laugh as well. He looked up in thought for a moment before continuing, "Now we just need Crow to do something picture-worthy."

"Eh, it'll have to happen eventually. These things are pretty much unavoidable in the long run, we just have to be patient," Judai shrugged, finally sitting up straight in his chair, "Anyway, want some food? I don't know about you guys but I'm _starving_."

"You're always hungry," Yusei mused, though he turned to Carly at a sudden thought, "Oh, you've never had Judai's cooking, huh?"

"No?" Carly blinked questioningly, not quite understanding what he was getting at.

...Right, sometimes Yusei forgot that not all their friends knew about Judai's second job and cooking skills. He'd just gotten so used to the idea of Judai being a good cook and, as he'd figured out, baker that he always assumed the others knew as well.

Also, that sounded almost exactly like something Judai would say. Yusei was seriously picking up more and more of Judai's mannerisms and lines of thought, and he could only hope that Judai was picking up some of his as well - just not the insomnia part, though. He wouldn't wish that on anyone.

"He's pretty much a professional chef at this point," Yusei explained, quickly pinning Judai with a look when he immediately went to complain, "Don't deny it, you've cooked and baked for official functions. Phoenix even admitted that people were asking who the chef was at that last one you went to, you are."

"Chefs decide the menu, I did _not_ decide the menu-"

"You literally had a two hour talk with him about what they should serve for a four-course meal the other day."

"Only because he said he didn't have much experience with the specific types of food the client was asking for-"

"So he asked you, you made up the menu, and now you're going to be working when he holds that specific party. You've just proven my point, Judai."

Carly snorted across from them at their mini argument, beaming brightly when they looked over, "You two are already acting like an old married couple, how cute."

For once, both Yusei _and_ Judai were flustered, and as they stuttered over a response she merely started laughing more.


	124. Professional Chef

**_5/4/19_**

"Shining praises from everyone, good job," Edo said, meeting Judai near the back entrance of the building they were in, "The client in particular was happy with it, so thanks for that."

"Thanks, and no problem," Judai replied, giving him a tired, but satisfied smile, "Looks like all those years of travelling gave me at least a little bit of useful knowledge."

Edo snorted at that, saying, "There you go, being all humble and stuff again. If it weren't for the fact that I know you, I'd say you underestimated yourself."

"Humble, huh?" Judai mused, thinking about how Yusei kept insisting that he was much better than he gave himself credit for. Edo wasn't actually too far off the mark in saying he underestimated himself sometimes, but that tended to be for the bigger, super-important things, not things like cooking and baking.

No one but Yusei would get to know that though, and he was perfectly fine with it staying that way.

"Actually, I did have a question, maybe you can answer it," Judai continued, frowning slightly at having remembered the point Yusei tried to drive home a week before-hand while Carly was over, "Would I be considered a... professional chef or something?"

By the gods, even just asking it was hard. Why was it so hard for him to think of himself as that? It wasn't like he thought it was a bad thing at all, and it actually made him kind-of happy to think about, so then why was it so hard for him to try and accept as reality?

 _"Recognition for something other than dueling_ ," Yubel answered, soothing him quietly in the back of his mind before he could start worrying too much, " _It's not a bad thing, just different. You have to grow into the role to get comfortable with it._ "

" _...Reminds me of when I first became king,"_ Haou stated in agreement.

" _Ah, good example - you were a prince and a swordsman for years before you became a king. I remember it being difficult for you to adjust at first to suddenly having to control an entire realm and not always being able to be on the battlefield._ "

" _The feeling was similar."_

Well, it made Judai feel a bit better about being so off-kilter at the idea - it was, at least, a _normal_ thing to feel and have happen to you, and that was always an important distinction to create.

"I suppose you would, at this point," Edo blinked, surprised at the question but still answering it relatively quickly, "You may not have an official education for it, but you're more qualified to be one than a lot of the other 'professionals' I've worked with, so yes, I would definitely consider you to be one."

"Well, I guess Yusei wins this one then," Judai sighed, though he had a smile on his face regardless, "He brought it up recently and I guess I just wanted another person to confirm it."

"I see," Edo replied with a grin, folding his arms and leaning on the wall across from him, "Speaking of, Manjoume wants you to text him when you can about the favor you wanted."

"Did he figure something out?" Judai asked, perking up at the reminder of what he'd asked them to do. It'd barely been two or three weeks since the tournament, he wasn't expecting him to already have results.

"Apparently. He's a lucky bastard if he has, I've still come up with nothing on my end," Edo muttered in response, competitive annoyance lacing his voice.

Judai couldn't help but chuckle at that, "I'll be surprised as well if he has, I've never actually tried having someone do this before and I was expecting something more like months, not weeks."

"Well, months or weeks, it's definitely worth it if it works in the end."

 _It was_ _ **more**_ _than worth it if it worked,_ Judai thought to himself, nodding in agreement.

For now though, as excited as he was by this, he was seriously itching to just get home and back to Yusei. Gods know if he actually set the alarms again this time to take breaks since it was actual work he was focusing on, and Judai had been low-key worried about him since he realized this. As much as he absolutely adored that part of Yusei for being determined and hard-working, he sometimes wished he'd tone back on it just ever-so-slightly...

Ah well, that's why Judai was there to pull him out of it.


	125. Relaxing After Work

_**5/5/19**_

Well, Judai had to give props to Yusei for trying at least - he'd set five alarms and actually taken a break for two of them.

"Did you eat or did you just get more coffee?" Judai asked, gently pulling Yusei away from the laptop once he saw him save his files and shutting it as he spun the chair around.

"I... think I ate?" Yusei mumbled, yawning a bit into his hand and blinking in thought, "Yeah, I did. I ate the rest of last night's dinner at... what time is it?"

"Almost nine."

"Probably three hours ago then, the sun was just starting to go down when I did."

Judai sighed with a grin, relieved that he'd actually managed to eat dinner on time, "Well that's good. If you're still hungry I've got leftovers from work you can eat too."

"Maybe a little bit," Yusei admitted, getting up when Judai moved back a bit to give him room. He surprised Judai when he slumped forward and pulled him into a hug, burying his head into his hair with a relaxed sigh.

"Aw, I missed ya too," Judai hummed, wrapping his arms around his waist and enjoying the warmth. It'd been a while since he'd seen Yusei like this - super tired and worn out from working for way too long, and as a result extremely touchy as well.

Looks like he'd be getting a lot of bear hugs tonight, which was just fine with him. Judai himself was pretty worn out from having to interact with people all day in the kitchen (the work itself wasn't that strenuous for him considering his abilities), so it was even more appealing than usual.

"...Want me to make some tea while you go take a shower?" Yusei asked after a minute or two.

"Oh my gods, _yes_ ," Judai groaned, burying his head further into Yusei's shoulder and earning a laugh from him in response, "Use the new stuff I got the other day, it's supposed to be good for relaxing. Please and _thank you_."

"Will do," Yusei chuckled, finally pulling back from him and looking a lot more alive than he had when Judai'd first came in the room, "I'll get started on that then - don't take too long or it'll get cold, okay?"

"That's not too hard to do," Judai mused, seeing the opportunity to tease him and taking it, "After all, there's nothing to do in the shower unless you're with me."

Yusei rolled his eyes, apparently too tired to get flustered; it didn't disappoint Judai at all though because the exasperated look Yusei gave him when he cuddled back up to him and whined was hilarious enough to satisfy him.

"Come on, you gotta admit it was fun~"

"Did you want your tea or not? Plus, the sooner you go, the sooner I can eat and I'm hungry."

"...You make a very compelling argument, I'll go now."

"That's what I thought."


	126. Arts and Crafts

_**5/6/19**_

If there was one thing Yusei didn't expect to see when he looked up from his laptop, it was Judai carefully peeling open a can of paint in the middle of the living room and surrounded by boxes.

"What... are you doing?" he asked, not surprised in the slightest that Judai had finally gotten bored enough of sitting around all day and bought stuff to entertain himself with. Still, it didn't change the fact that he was confused about what he trying to accomplish with this.

"Hm? Oh, this?" Judai blinked, looking up at the question before smiling brightly at him, "I bought a whole bunch of arts and crafts stuff! I wanted to try my hand at it, so I bought a little of everything."

Well, at least that explained where Jack and Haou had pulled all that random stuff from for their competitions.

"So what're you trying first?" Yusei asked idly, standing up and wincing at the pop he heard when he stretched. It was about time he took a break, anyway, and this way he could make sure Judai hadn't bought anything _too_ insane - the last thing he wanted was another explosion or something in the living room, though at least Judai had been smart enough to buy what looked like a picnic blanket to put on the ground underneath him just in case.

...Huh, that was an idea. A picnic, maybe at that little viewing spot he'd shown Judai before? He'd have to ask him later when Judai didn't look so excited to share what was on his mind, he didn't want to interrupt that.

"Painting!" Judai chirped, holding up the now-open paint can and pointing at the canvas that was suddenly in front of him, "To be honest, I've actually done this a bit before while I was travelling, so I already know I like it. I just wanted to start off with something I already knew so I could tear into the supplies a bit."

Yusei hummed in response, looking on with genuine interest. He'd never gotten too much into the art side of things, unless you counted blueprints and putting together his runner from scratch; there simply hadn't been room for such topics in the Satellite aside from the occasional writing utensils and paper that generally found their way to the orphanage, so it was a relatively new concept for him still.

"You know any of the theory behind it?"

"Eh... I know a little about color theory and proportions, but you know me, I generally just learn by doing so that's what I did."

"Wanna tell me what you do know, then? I don't know anything about this stuff, it's interesting."

"Sure! Come on, first help me wash some stuff in the kitchen and fill the water cups, then we can get started," Judai smiled, his eyes lighting up in excitement at the prospect.

They were both messes of paint by the end of two hours, but to Yusei, the sight of Judai splattered in rainbows of paint and laughing happily was beautiful and well worth the trouble.


	127. Noticing Little Things

**_5/7/19_**

Yusei found that he appreciated the virtual world a lot more after he'd gone on that spree and learned the basics behind it, and he couldn't help but marvel at the work that went into the game to make it so realistic; Sitting with Judai in some random field on the world map and just enjoying the view of whatever was below, whether it be a town, forest, ocean, or some other random thing, while playing idly around with magic on his fingertips wouldn't be possible otherwise.

"You've got that look on your face again," Judai said, pulling Yusei out of his thoughts. He had a silly grin on when he looked up, one of his cheeks squished by the hand he was leaning on; his smile was infectious and soon enough Yusei found himself smiling as well.

"And what look would that be?" Yusei asked, letting the magic fade out as he leaned back on his hands.

"Like you wanna deconstruct the thing you're lookin' at. You tend to get it whenever you find something that piques your interest," Judai replied, "Like a new gadget or earlier when I was explaining color theory to you."

"I did it then?"

"Yeah, when I showed you the color wheel. You got that same look and started asking all sorts of questions that I couldn't answer 'cause I only know the basics."

"Oh," Yusei blinked, thinking back to it and realizing that he _had_ had the same relative thought process going on then that he usually had whenever he was working with his projects.

"Ah, n-not that it's a bad thing at all!" Judai stated, sitting up straight with a slightly panicked look on his face, "I actually think it's really cool how you can think of all that so fast and from just a little bit of information, and it's really admirable and uh- I- er-"

Yusei raised an eyebrow in amusement and chuckled, "I know, don't worry - and I appreciate the compliment."

Aw, he kind-of wished they weren't in the game right now because Judai's embarrassment wasn't something that happened too often, but he'd take stuttered responses and embarrassed glances away over nothing any day.

"Anyway, uh, we should probably go back to town and turn in the quest," Judai said after a minute, standing up and holding out a hand for Yusei to take, "I wanted to open the new box that came out, remember?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Yusei smiled, taking the hand and letting himself get pulled up.

They made it back to town relatively quickly and turned in the quest, then started making their way back to the main city because the card shop there was the one that gave away free packs to players at a random chance whenever they bought a box of a set. As they were walking through the shops to get there, though, they took their time (like they usually did) to window-shop.

Judai was the one doing it, but Yusei found it entertaining to watch him get excited over different things, so he didn't mind at all. After a bit though, Judai stopped in thought and turned to look at him questioningly.

"Hey, I just realized something - when's your birthday, Yusei?" Judai asked, "Mine's on August thirty-first."

"My birthday?" Yusei mused, caught off-guard by the sudden question but still making sure to commit 'August thirty-first' to memory, "It's July seventh."

Judai hummed, staring at him for a bit longer before grabbing his hand again and threading their fingers together with a smile and muttering, "Got it, July seventh. July seventh, July seventh..."

"...Please don't do anything too big, I don't really celebrate it that much," Yusei said, sighing when Judai looked at him with wide eyes and a slight pout forming.

...Well, looks like he'd have to plan on not working on his birthday this year like he usually did. Hopefully Judai wouldn't ask him what he did do to celebrate his birthday before, because he knew 'eating a chocolate bar and working' wouldn't go over well with him.


	128. Planning Another Date

**_5/8/19_**

Yusei sighed as he watched the file in front of him complete its save - it'd taken him a couple days of debugging this one file that just didn't want to work, but he'd finally gotten it to work to his satisfaction. Now he just had a couple more things to go through and debug, though he already knew they wouldn't take days like this one had, which meant that he'd finish ahead of schedule and have a couple days off before he had to send in his work.

... _I should go with Judai on another date_ , he thought idly, frowning slightly as he thought about it - they'd gone out a few times in the beginning, but keeping up a regular schedule for them hadn't ended up working because they both had irregular, spontaneous jobs. Yusei was thankful they were living together because otherwise it would've been a bit more difficult to spend time with each other; he couldn't imagine dating Judai and _not_ being able to cuddle him at night, either.

How did he ever survive before Judai came into his life? Sometimes it was hard to think about it, and it'd only been a few months. At least he didn't have to worry about him leaving at all - they were far too invested in each other and from what Judai had told him, _fated_ to be together.

Stars, he absolutely loved him.

"Hey, Judai," he said, leaning back in his chair and swiveling around to look at the other, who was sitting on the couch and sinking his time into a thousand piece puzzle he'd bought. It was a picture of a bunch of duel monsters playing around in the snow, which Yusei secretly found hilarious because the rainy season had started picking up. Plus, it reminded him of the huge snowball fight they'd had with Jack and Crow, which had been dubbed the Great Snow War.

Honestly, if it snowed again any time soon, there'd be the Deadly Snow War because their duel monsters would probably beg to be materialized. Judai had joked about it one time, laughing and that he couldn't help but think of Crow barraging them from above with snowballs thanks to his Blackwings, but Yusei knew just as well as he did that it was a very strong possibility.

"What's up?" Judai asked, carefully placing another piece in the half-way finished puzzle and smiling in success before looking up, "You takin' a break?"

"Just a quick one, I want some more tea or something before I start cracking down on the next file I have," Yusei admitted, standing up and gesturing for Judai to scoot over on the couch a bit so he could sit next to him, "But, I was also thinking we could go out on another date in a couple days. If I keep working at the pace I'm going at, I'll be done early and have a couple days free before I have to turn in the program."

Judai's eyes lit up in excitement as he practically beamed at Yusei, "Really?! Sweet, I'm down! Did you have something specific in mind?"

Yusei smiled at his enthusiasm and pulled him into his lap, letting out a happy sigh as he curled around him, "To be honest, I wanted to go back to the place I showed you with the view of the bridge and have a picnic or... something, I don't know. I just wanted something relaxing, and I remember you saying you wanted to go back there as well when we had more time."

"Sounds like a great plan to me," Judai replied, wrapping his arms around him and kissing his cheek before laughing after a few moments, "You really are like a cat, jeez. Next thing I know you're gonna rub our faces together non-stop just like a cat, too."

"What, like this?" Yusei teased, rubbing their cheeks together roughly with a smirk.

"...Yeah, just like that," Judai muttered indignantly, pouting at him cutely when he pulled back after a minute and instead started to pull at his face with his hands; he couldn't do much to stop him either because of the way Yusei was wrapped around him, so he just had to endure it.

"Stop it, Yusei."

"Nah, don't feel like it."

"...Don't you have work to do?"

"It can wait for now, I just finished the hardest part of it so I've earned a long break. Now, just keep being cute for me, okay?"

"You're lucky _you're_ cute - cute and handsome."

"Love you, Judai."

"Love you too, but please... my cheeks are starting to hurt- oh no, don't you dare pull that face on me mister!"

Yusei may not pull them out often, but he _was_ very adept at making puppy eyes - it was a secret he kept hidden for the most part, but for Judai? It was so worth it to use them on him because his reaction was priceless every time, and Yusei would always end up winning in the end.

He hummed happily to himself as Judai relented and couldn't help but start to laugh despite the treatment of his face.


	129. Rainy Morning

**_5/9/19_**

"It's raining, huh?" Yusei mumbled, curling more around Judai when he woke up to try and steal more of his warmth. The living heater was sleeping away still, his breaths even and slow as he unconsciously responded to the movement and tightened his grip on Yusei's shirt; Yusei smiled down at him and gave him a light kiss, chuckling quietly when he heard Judai grumble slightly in his sleep in response.

A quick glance at the clock told him it was around eight o'clock in the morning. They'd gone to sleep pretty early the previous night, so it meant they'd actually slept in - as planned, of course, since Yusei had finished all his work and had a few days to relax.

As much as he didn't want to, he knew he should probably wake Judai up so they didn't end up staying in bed all day, so he started nudging the other until he finally got a response other than a sleepy, half-hearted swat at his hand.

"Why must you wake me up?" Judai groaned, blinking blearily at Yusei. He ended up yawning into the kiss Yusei dragged him into shortly afterwards, which he couldn't help but be amused by.

"Did you still want to go out today? It's raining," Yusei asked, helping Judai move some of his hair out of his face so he could kiss him again without it being in the way.

"The rain makes it better," Judai replied, a soft smile growing on his face due to all the kisses he was getting and slowly waking up, "We can just bring an umbrella and towels to sit on or something like that."

"We'll do that then," Yusei hummed, sitting up despite the protests Judai gave at the action, "Come on, we gotta up now and you know it."

"But it's cold outside the blankets," Judai pouted, attempting to cover himself entirely with one of the blankets they had; that just wouldn't do, though, so Yusei delighted in the yelp he received when he simply lifted Judai up, blanket and all, out of the bed sheets and into his lap.

"Of course you're cold, you're a walking heater. The higher your body temperature, the easier it is for you to feel cold," Yusei grinned, easily ignoring the glare Judai was giving him and ruffling his hair lightly, "Now seriously, come on, let's go get ready and make some food."

"Fine," Judai muttered, a sudden smirk coming onto his face, "But only if you take a nice, hot shower with me."

"What is with you and wanting to shower with me recently?"

"...You know _exactly_ why I want to, you tease."

"It's not my fault you're so obsessed with it, it was one time."

"One time is not enough times."

Yusei hummed, pretending to think hard on it before saying, "Dunno, I think I'll let you take a nice, hot shower by yourself while I go make us some coffee. Specifically _your_ favorite coffee."

The absolutely torn look on Judai's face was priceless and he reveled in knowing his weaknesses so well.


	130. Relaxing Date

**_5/10/19_**

Yusei immediately found himself pinned with puppy eyes when he walked out of the restroom after getting ready.

"More coffee?" Judai asked, holding up his mug to his face.

"Of course. You don't have to beg for it, you know," Yusei replied, raising an eyebrow with a small, amused smile. He listened to Judai cheer happily in success while he went over to the closet and pulled out a heavier coat than he usually wore because it was raining.

"Alright, you make coffee then while I make the food," Judai stated, getting up from where he sat on the bed and grinning as he held the door open, "Make a lot, 'cause I have travel mugs we can use."

"...Since when did we own travel mugs?"

"Since about four days ago when I realized we didn't have any."

Yusei gave him an exasperated look as he passed him by the door, but he laughed anyway which led to Judai laughing as well while he followed behind. He wasn't surprised at all to find that said travel mugs had their signature monsters on them at this point, and it only made him love Judai more; the other's insistence on finding versions of literally anything with their monsters was very endearing to him.

It didn't take long for them to finish and pack everything away securely in one of his runner's storage compartments. Once they put on their jackets, Yusei made sure to take a minute or two to move his arms around and get used to wearing a thicker jacket - he wanted to make sure he wasn't too stiff while he was riding, especially in the rain. At least wearing the hoodie Judai had gotten him helped him get used to baggy clothing, which made the process go a bit faster than it usually would.

There were a lot more vehicles on the road due to the rain, which made getting to their destination take longer than usual, but on the flip side there were practically no pedestrians out once they got to the edge of the city, which meant they'd get to have a peaceful time without any possible interruptions.

"This place is just as nice in the rain as it is when it's sunny," Judai hummed happily after he took off his helmet, gazing out at the view, "It may be cloudy and stuff, but the air here is really crisp, especially with the rain."

"Glad we still came out, then," Yusei agreed, pulling off his own helmet and shaking his hair out; then he remembered it would just get flattened by the rain anyway, so he shrugged and simply got to work pulling things out of the storage compartment, holding out the umbrella first for Judai to take, "Here, go see if you can get it to stay somehow without us having to hold it."

"Okay!~" Judai sang, taking it from him and wandering over to the bench. After a minute or two, he heard Judai cheer once again in success, and when he looked up he saw that he'd managed to balance it on one of the back wood pieces of the bench and secure it in place by using the overhanging tree branches.

"Smart," he stated, and he could feel his chest tighten with warmth when Judai pridefully beamed at the praise, "Now here, you sort out the food while I spread out the towels. I don't know what's what, you're the one that made it."

"They're mostly sandwiches, but I also put in some of the pastries that I made yesterday for practice," Judai said, rustling around in the bag for a bit before joining him in sitting at the bench, "Here, it's still warm luckily. These're the breakfast versions I made with ham, egg, and cheese - classic breakfast stuff but in sandwich form."

"Thanks," Yusei smiled, taking the foil-wrapped food before setting it safely in his lap so he could tilt Judai's head up and pull him into a quick kiss.

"No problem," Judai mumbled once Yusei pulled back, leaning into his side with red cheeks but still meeting his eyes with a relaxed look, "Now come on, eat it before it gets cold."

And so he did, leaning back into Judai as he finally felt relaxed as well.


	131. Splashing Around

_**5/11/19**_

Judai hummed happily next to him, his cheek pressed into Yusei's chest while his arm around Judai's shoulder pulled him in closer for warmth. They'd simply sat and enjoyed the rain and the company after finishing their late breakfast, the sound of the rain filling the air as they watched the clouds out in the horizon move around.

"Hey, Yusei?" Judai suddenly asked, tilting his head up to look at him without actually removing it from him. Yusei hummed in acknowledgment, prompting him to continue, "Wanna go jump in some puddles with me?"

The childish grin Judai gave him was infectious and Yusei couldn't have denied him even if he wanted to, "Sure. Just not too long, we don't want to get sick accidentally."

"You're the one who'd be getting sick, not me," Judai retorted, standing up quickly before grabbing Yusei's hands and pulling him up, "Come on, let's go - I haven't done this in a while, it's fun!"

"I haven't either," Yusei replied with a smile, suddenly glad that he always wore boots that went up high on his leg so there wasn't any chance of water getting inside them, "Not since I was little, at least. Martha used to scold us for getting muddy and playing outside when it rained because we'd trail it back inside."

"That's just what kids do, they're messy little guys," Judai stated, laughing slightly and tugging Yusei over to the sidewalk. He proceeded to do a short hop and slam his feet down into a puddle, sending water flying everywhere with a loud 'plop'. His face brightened immediately as he turned to give Yusei a hopeful look.

Yusei glanced at one of the puddles right next to him before stomping a foot down into it and sending Judai a mischievous smirk as he kicked up and sent water splashing towards him. The chiming laughter he got in response only encouraged him to do it more, and soon enough they were both laughing as they tried to one-up each other in making the biggest splash.

"We're both totally soaked!" Judai exclaimed after a while, giggling uncontrollably at this point as he let himself fall onto Yusei, "Look at our hair, I don't think I've ever seen yours lay flat like that before for more than five minutes."

Yusei had noticed of course, considering his bangs were plastered to his face and he had to keep moving them out of his way so he could see, but now that Judai had brought it up he was paying attention to how Judai looked; his brown hair was matted down, bangs sticking to his face like his did but even more chaotically, and his face was red from a mix of the cold and laughing so much while his eyes seemed to sparkle as he looked up at him with a silly grin. He felt his heart skip a beat as he committed the sight of rain dripping down Judai's face and off the ends of his hair to memory.

"Yusei?"

Handsome, beautiful, cute, attractive - Yusei couldn't describe Judai with just one of them. He was all of them right now as he stared up with wide eyes filled with curiosity and what he could now recognize as love - it made Yusei think back to the first time he'd held Judai as he received the same kind of look, where he'd seen vulnerability instead and felt a connection to the other that stole his breath away.

He'd vowed back then to never let him go, and he was damn well never going to go back on it.

Yusei didn't say a word, but he knew he didn't need to as he gently brushed away Judai's hair from his face with a gloved hand and pressed their lips together, arms snaking around each other slowly as they kissed in the middle of the rain.

All he needed was that quick flash of understanding he saw from Judai and the way he'd leaned up to meet him halfway.


	132. Sick Days

**_5/12/19_**

The next morning, Judai was the first awake, which honestly should've been the first warning sign that stood out to him but he was so focused on staying in Yusei's warmth that he hadn't noted it was odd. It took him a few minutes of barely hanging on to the last dredges of sleep, but he finally roused enough from his half-asleep state to pull back a bit so he could look at Yusei's face.

As always, Yusei's sleeping face was cute, but after a few seconds Judai frowned as he noticed it wasn't quite as peaceful as it usually would be - something was off and he couldn't quite place it. He rubbed the crusty sleep from his eyes, blinking rapidly to get some moisture back in them before squinting at his face again, finally noticing how... flushed it was. And was it just him, or was his breathing a little shallower than normal?

 _Oh shit_ , he thought, which got the attention of the other two in his mind now that they knew he was awake.

" _What's up?_ " Yubel asked, and Judai must've been sending off distress signals because he could feel her immediately attempt to calm him down.

 _I'm ninety percent sure Yusei is now sick,_ Judai replied, frowning when he got a snort of amusement from Haou in response.

" _It's almost like you two predicted it,_ " Haou stated, rolling his eyes in the back of his head.

 _Oh shut up, what... what do I do?_

" _Right, you never actually learned how to treat sickness beyond 'eat soup and drink tea',_ " Yubel sighed, causing Judai to pout defensively.

 _It's not my fault it's almost impossible for me to get sick now!_ He retorted, getting up from the bed and making sure to re-wrap Yusei in the blankets afterwards, _Besides, whenever I did it was always in the spirit realm, and there's completely different stuff there!_

" _We know, Judai,_ " Yubel said soothingly, " _Don't worry, it's probably just a minor fever. It was just rain, go look in the restroom for a thermometer so you can double-check._ "

" _There's medicine in the kitchen storage,_ " Haou recalled, evidently deciding to be helpful this time despite the great amusement Judai could feel him having at the moment, " _When you get there I'll tell you which one._ "

 _Thanks_ , Judai said, taking a deep breath to get his bearings back before his mind could possibly run-off and make this whole thing seem irrationally worse. He thought his instincts got bad when Yusei was hurt, but now he was proving to himself that they were even worse when Yusei was sick with something; it wasn't something tangible like a wound so there was less he could actually do about it, which was probably the reason why he was starting to worry so much.

He found the thermometer, cleaning it with an alcohol wipe once Haou reminded him that he needed to, before quickly returning and sticking it carefully in Yusei's mouth and under his tongue without waking him up.

One-hundred point two degrees, definitely sick with a fever. At least it wasn't any higher than that.

Judai double-checked to make sure Yusei was nice and cozy in the bed, moving a couple pillows around him until he was satisfied, before wandering off to the kitchen to start making some classic chicken noodle soup. He'd make tea after the other woke up so that it'd be fresh and- wait, did they have honey?

He felt a split second of panic before remembering that yes, they did have honey since he'd just bought it the other day.

"Good morning!"

Judai startled at the voice, whipping around to find Crow at the entrance to the kitchen while gripping a hand to his chest with a yelp.

"Whoa, you okay there Judai?" Crow asked, giving him a confused, concerned frown.

"Yeah, I- I'm fine, just didn't notice you come down," Judai replied, letting out a nervous laugh. Holy shit, he seriously needed to calm down if that was his reaction to someone else - luckily for him Crow hadn't noticed the shadows that had been ready to lash out behind him, and he forced the tendrils that had formed to melt away.

"What's got you in a tizzy?"

"Uh- Yusei's got a fever, hundred point two. Not too bad, but-"

He was interrupted by Crow patting him on the shoulder with a sympathetic wince, which only made him worry more, "Is he asleep right now?"

"...Yes?"

"Good. Appreciate this little bit of peace right now, because you're not going to get any reprieve once he wakes up and starts insisting he's fine," Crow stated, clearly speaking from experience, "I know he's on break right now from work, but he's going to be begging for his laptop anyway - whatever you do, you can't give it to him."

"Wait, why?"

"Because it's easier to deal with a sad sick Yusei who never got his laptop than an angry sick Yusei who's had his laptop taken from his grasp in an attempt to make him sleep again."

This didn't bode well for Judai at all. Maybe though... maybe it wouldn't be too bad because at this point Yusei was used to Judai doting on him, at least a bit, right? He might just sigh and let him do whatever he wants to help him.

...Hopefully. He'd just have to see how it went once Yusei woke up.


	133. Stubborn Sickness

**_5/13/19_**

Thanks to Crow's timely warning, Judai had the foresight to hide Yusei's laptop away before he woke up. He hid it in the last place he'd probably think of, which was Judai's old travel pack that'd been shoved to the back of their closet for quite some time, so he wasn't too worried about Yusei finding it.

Didn't make it any easier to keep it a secret, though.

"Judai, please? Can I just have it?" Yusei asked, and Judai had to bite his tongue to keep himself from saying 'yes' because Yusei was pulling out all the stops to get his laptop. In other words, he was getting to experience the terrifying force that was Yusei giving him constant puppy eyes and latching onto him in the cutest, most distracting ways possible.

Judai knew that he knew _exactly_ what he was doing, too, since he saw the same victorious glint in Yusei's eyes every time he had to look away or visibly bite back a response.

"Please love? I'll let you have another pass even."

"Never took you to be the begging _and_ bargaining type," Judai muttered under his breath, letting out a sigh before pushing Yusei's mug of tea back into his hands and saying louder, "Drink the rest of it and I'll think about it. Besides, didn't you want to wash out the taste of the medicine? It was that artificial grape flavor, I remember how awful it was to take as a kid."

Yusei made a face as he suddenly seemed to remember that he could still taste the aftertaste of the liquid medicine he'd taken, quickly obeying and going back to sipping at his honey-filled tea. In doing so he unlatched himself from Judai's arm, which meant Judai was free to stand-up and escape far enough from the bed that Yusei couldn't reach him without getting up.

And well... Yusei could try, but he wouldn't be able to, as he found out a minute later when he tried to put down the drink and follow Judai off the bed.

"Seriously Judai?" Yusei asked, sending him the most indignant deadpan look Judai had ever seen.

"Yup."

"This is gross abuse of your powers, you should be ashamed."

"Nah, if Haou can do it to Jack, I can definitely do it to you," Judai grinned shamelessly, making sure his shadows that were wrapped around Yusei's legs were secure before waving as he walked out of the room, "I made you soup. I'll be right back with some, okay?"

"Let me go with you, I'm not sick enough to have to stay in bed-" Yusei tried to say, coughing in the middle of his sentence and pouting at the unconvinced look Judai sent him, "-I'm fine, damn it."

"Uh huh. Sure, it's not like your temperature went up point-five degrees in the thirty minutes that passed between the two times I checked it," Judai said, rolling his eyes slightly as he went back to exiting - if that's how Yusei wanted to do this, then that's fine. It wouldn't work nearly as well as his begging had beforehand; thank the gods, because Judai didn't think he could last much longer under that kind of manipulation.

When he came back with the soup, Judai had fortified his mental defenses once again, though he couldn't help the soft smile he gave when Yusei's eyes lit up at the smell and taste of the food. He was just glad that he was smiling and not feeling quite as bad as he could be.

...Then again, this was Yusei - he could very well be in pain and just be hiding it extremely well. High pain tolerance was something Judai understood and had himself, though honestly, Yusei took it to a whole different level.

"If you start getting a headache or anything, just tell me and I'll get you painkillers, okay?" Judai said quietly, sitting back next to Yusei while he ate and lightly threading his fingers through his hair. He got a nod in return, which wasn't quite good enough to satisfy his irrationally worried state of mind but he pretended it was anyway.

He moved the tray to the side table once Yusei finished eating, pulling him into a hug and burying his face in his neck so that he could finally get his thoughts to slow down. It wasn't even close to being as bad as it was after that one reactor visit, but it was still enough to throw him off-kilter.

Stupid instincts.

"...Can I have my laptop no-ah! Judai, what the hell? S-stop it-"

"Not until you stop asking about it," Judai mumbled, feeling a bit bad that his initial reaction to being annoyed had been to bite him considering where his head currently was; then of course, he realized this was the perfect excuse to have some fun and kept going at it, staying in one spot that got him the reaction he wanted while also being able to be covered with a jacket later, "Now unless you want to sweat out your fever in a different way, I suggest you listen to me."

To his delight, Yusei stopped asking... for about two hours. At least doing the same thing to remind him of Judai's not-so-subtle threat made him stop again.


	134. Trade Secret

**_5/14/19_**

"...Yusei's sick?" Jack repeated, giving Judai a wary look from the kitchen table next to Crow.

"Yup," Judai answered, happily making himself dinner and sipping at a mug of tea while he did so. Yusei had finally gone back to sleep, which meant he was finally able to relax for a bit without worrying too much.

"You're surprisingly... _chipper_ despite this," Jack stated, looking to Crow afterwards for answers, "Did you tell him about how he gets when he's sick?"

"Yeah, but even I expected him to be a bit tired after taking care of him for the whole day," Crow replied. Both he and Jack turned to Judai afterwards with curious gazes, so he had to answer somehow.

"I can be very persuasive," Judai said, a small smile forming on his face that he barely kept from growing wicked.

"Uh huh... and how's that?"

Judai hummed for a moment, thinking of how to word what he'd done without really letting on to what it was before saying, "All it took was a couple _well-placed threats_ to get him to stop asking about his laptop. Simple, really."

Ah, he couldn't wait to see said well-placed threats once they'd all fully developed later. The great part was that because they were well-placed, Judai could leave as much as he wanted and no one else would ever get to see his dear Yusei like that; he may not enjoy his duel monster instincts sometimes, but things like this were fine in his book.

"Seriously?" Crow frowned, giving him an incredulous look while Jack simply narrowed his eyes, "We've threatened to break the damn thing before and that hadn't deterred him at all. What did you do?"

"Trade secret," Judai replied with a silly grin, shamelessly stealing lines from Yusei at this point because they worked so well for getting out of explanations. Judai may be better at reading emotions and people overall, but Yusei was extremely good at the technical one-liners that either ended conversations or left no room for the other person to control it. Personally, he thought it was mainly a stoic-person trait since Haou was pretty good at the same thing - using less words yet leaving a great impact with them.

Crow rolled his eyes in response, going back to munching on the food in front of him instead of trying to pry information out of Judai any longer; Jack let out a slight sigh into his coffee mug before drinking it, effectively letting the topic go for now.

"Anyway," Jack started after a second, "On a completely different subject, Carly managed to squirm her way into a special reporter character in DDO."

"She did?!" Judai quickly spun around excitedly, somehow managing not to send the food in his hands flying, "Yes! Now we've got someone to keep up with all the stuff circulating in-game!"

"What's this about?" Crow asked confusedly, shoving another bite of beef into his mouth.

"It's a publicity stunt pretty much, but it's smart," Jack admitted, waving haphazardly towards Judai, "He knows more about it than I do - Carly was speaking too fast when she told me about it for me to pick up on much."

"Basically, they're characters that have access to special camera functions and are given the ability to fly," Judai explained, joining them at the table with a content sigh once he sat down, "It'll let them take better pictures for articles and such, especially when the tournaments happen. Apparently when they hold one, they also get the ability to turn invisible so they don't get in the way during duels, but it's only during the tournament period so no one can abuse it."

"Makes sense, but why did you get so excited about it?" Crow asked, looking up in thought, "It's cool yeah, flying is cool, but it doesn't seem like that big a deal."

"'Cause you don't think like a reporter," Judai replied, pointing his fork at him as he continued explaining, "This was a free opportunity for Carly to get more gossip while also getting to have some duels and free article topics handed to her on a silver platter. That, and if Yusei and I ever need something corrected, she can do it on all platforms now - social media, video games, in the newspaper, etc. Most of our bases can be covered while boosting her reputation in the journalism field."

He'd have to text her about it later, he'd barely been looking at his phone all day due to Yusei. Not that he was truly upset about that though, considering how clingy and cute Yusei had been, even once he relented and went to sleep; Judai had to stay with him and let him hug his arm (specifically his arm, for whatever reason Yusei had conjured up with those feverish gears of his) in order to get him to even consider finally going to sleep.

Either way, he had food to eat and tea to drink now, and that's really all that mattered to him at the moment. He could worry about all the other stuff later.


	135. Payback

_**5/15/19**_

"Your fever's officially gone now," Judai grinned two days later, holding up the thermometer for Yusei to see, "Know what that means?"

"I'm not sick anymore?" Yusei asked amusedly, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Well, obviously that, but you also get this back!" Judai announced dramatically, holding up Yusei's laptop that he'd hidden in a drawer just so he could present it like that.

"At this point, I care more about you not biting me anymore," Yusei muttered, though he took the laptop eagerly with a small smile and immediately opened it to go through some things.

Judai was quick to capitalize on the distraction, leaning over behind him on the bed and whispering lowly in his ear, "You sure? Because I love how you look when I do." He nibbled softly on the tip of Yusei's ear, laughing with a shit-eating grin when Yusei pushed him away with slightly wide-eyes and pink cheeks.

"Judai!" Yusei reprimanded, looking so adorably embarrassed that Judai couldn't help laugh more.

"Aw, come on, it's true!" he retorted, pulling Yusei into a hug and making sure his face was still visible to him so he didn't pull away out of fear of getting bitten, "I even made sure they were easily covered!"

Yusei grumbled but didn't hesitate to kiss back when Judai pulled him into one, smiling cheekily the entire time. Judai ended up peppering his entire face with kisses in the end just so he could hear Yusei's beautiful laugh and make him smile too.

"Thanks for the soup and stuff," Yusei said after a few minutes, finally calming down from his embarrassment.

"What kinda boyfriend would I be if didn't do that for ya?" Judai replied, finally relaxing as well - now that Yusei was healthy again, a tension in his body that he didn't know he had disappeared.

Yusei hummed, and soon Judai found himself being tugged further onto the bed and lightly pushed down to lay his head in Yusei's lap; he sighed softly as fingers started playing idly with his hair, enjoying the fact that he didn't have to worry anymore for the moment.

"Rest for a bit, you look tired," Yusei murmured, leaning down and kissing his temple lightly.

"That noticeable, huh?" Judai replied, curling up and grabbing onto Yusei's hoodie to snuggle into it.

"Only to me."

He hummed in response, closing his eyes and listening contentedly to the sound of Yusei tapping away at the keyboard. It greatly amused him that he could type that fast with only one hand, considering he still had one on Judai's head that was scratching lightly and making him nearly fall asleep.

He says nearly, because right when he could feel himself starting to drift he was woken up by a light bite to his neck that made him yelp.

"Damn it Yusei!" Judai whined, his face heating up as he realized what'd happened. He looked on with dread as Yusei stared at him with narrowed eyes filled with mirth and a small, mischievous grin that made his heart do flips in his chest.

"My turn," Yusei stated simply, one hand clamping down firmly on Judai's arm to keep him in place while the other brushed Judai's hair away from his face and neck.

This had to be karma coming back to bite him in the ass- actually no, the _neck_ , karma was coming back to bite him in the neck, _literally_.

"If you heal fast, does that mean these will too?" Yusei mused in between, "Probably, right? Then that means I can find the sensitive spots all over and not have to worry about you needing to hide them."

All Judai could do was bite his lip and try not to lose himself while cursing his healing abilities for once in his life.


	136. Stormy

**_5/16/19_**

That night, it rained again, but this time there was thunder rolling in the distance as well with the occasional flash of light from lightning striking down. The storm still hadn't left in the morning either, and a loud crack of thunder happened to be what woke both of them up at the same time.

"What the- oh, I see," Judai yelped, cutting himself off once his mind snapped out of the sleepy haze that'd been torn away quickly, "Jeez, it really is rainy season, huh?" He turned to look at Yusei, noticing that he looked rather... tense.

"Thunder, huh?" Yusei mumbled to himself, glancing over at Judai and opening his mouth to say something before jolting slightly as another crack of thunder rang out through the window.

Judai looked on with wide-eyes, suddenly realizing what was going on and carefully asking, "Yusei... are you uh, scared of thunder, or lightning or something?"

Yusei stared at him for a few moments, contemplating his words before quietly saying, "Not... not necessarily that. I just haven't- uh, had the best experience with electricity. That I didn't have control over."

"Bad memories," Judai stated knowingly, seeing in Yusei the same kind of tense look that he himself would get sometimes that came from remembering things that weren't so great.

"Yeah," Yusei agreed softly.

"We can talk about it if you want, we don't have to though," Judai continued, not wanting to pressure him into anything. He did gather up the blankets though before holding up the bed sheets and gesturing for Yusei to go in, earning him a confused look before Yusei shrugged and did what he wanted. He pulled the bed sheets and all the blankets on top of them completely once he did, letting them fall into a warm, snugly darkness as he pulled Yusei close after.

"It'll block out some of the noise, plus you won't have to see any of the lightning flashes anymore," Judai explained with a grin, knowing that Yusei would have to take some time to adjust to the dark to see him. Judai only needed a little bit of time to adjust, as he was already able to make out Yusei's smiling face relatively clearly.

"Thanks," Yusei said appreciatively, grabbing his hand and lacing their fingers together. Some more thunder rang out at that moment, but it was significantly quieter thanks to the layers of blankets and sheets muffling the noise; he didn't startle much at all beyond tightening his grip on Judai ever-so-slightly, which meant that Judai's plan had worked.

They stayed quiet for a bit, soaking up the warmth of the blankets and each other while they both cuddled as close as they possibly could.

Eventually though, Yusei spoke up softly, seeming to have made up his mind on something, "I've been electrocuted a few times."

Judai winced at that, understanding why errant electricity seemed to put him off enough to make him actually flinch at things like lightning and thunder, "That _sucks_. What happened?"

"...Electric torture, when I was in the facility. Had to duel with rigged duel disks, too, that would shock you badly every time you lost life points. I lost a lot of 'em in that duel."

Gods, Judai was getting flashbacks to when Ryo turned to underground duels and constantly dueled like that - it was horrifying to watch, and even worse knowing that it was the reason his heart started failing. And now, imagining _Yusei_ having to do that exact same thing, even just once, was seriously upsetting to him.

Even worse than that though - electric torture?

 _They'd tortured him in that fucking shit hole? It wasn't enough to fucking mark him like he wasn't even a person?_

"Woah, Judai, calm down!" Yusei stated, grabbing his face with both his hands and forcing him to look at him in the eyes; Judai blinked, coming back into himself as he realized he'd been on the verge of growling.

"Sorry, but that absolutely pisses me off - how can they be allowed to get away with that shit?" Judai huffed, gently taking Yusei's hands off his face to hold with one hand while tracing Yusei's mark with the other, leaning in to kiss it before catching Yusei's lips with his own as he went to say something. His hand slid from his cheek to the back of his head, pulling him into it even harder as if doing so would wipe the bad thoughts away.

To be fair, it worked fairly well for a minute or two - they both got easily get lost in each other whenever they kissed.

"If it makes you feel better," Yusei breathed in between kisses, when Judai pulled away for a short break, "I got the corrupt asshole fired that was ordering it, and he even got a taste of his own medicine 'cause a friend hacked into the system and turned his duel disk's shock setting back on."

Judai grinned wickedly, feeling proud all of a sudden of his lover, " _Good_."

And then he pulled him back in for hard kisses, the storm outside completely forgotten by both of them.


	137. Pancake Breakfast

**_5/17/19_**

"I'm guessing you don't wanna go out today," Judai stated later that morning, setting down a plate of chocolate pancakes in front of Yusei before sitting next to him with a smile.

Yusei shook his head, pecking Judai on the cheek before starting to cut up his food, saying, "Not with the storm. Thanks for the food."

"I put extra chocolate just for you," Judai grinned, digging into his own plate with a happy hum, "Fighred hat hou cohld ush-"

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Yusei reprimanded, thoroughly amused by the sheepish look Judai made in return as he took the time to chew and swallow before continuing.

"Sorry. Anyway, I was trying to say that I figured you could use the pick-me-up," he said.

"I appreciate it," Yusei replied softly, not quite used to someone knowing about his wariness of storms and things like that. He hadn't told anyone before as it was easy enough to hide it, plus it was a recent development so Crow and Jack wouldn't know anything about it unless they somehow stumbled upon him, which they hadn't.

Telling Judai had been a bit cathartic, actually. Most people, including most of his friends, didn't even realize that that side of him existed even though he thought it would be kind-of... obvious that he had some issues considering what he'd gone through. Then again, most didn't know about half the things he went through anyway because he was separated from them in some way at the time. Thus, no one ever wondered or asked him because he tried really hard not to let it show.

But this was Judai, and it had felt so damn nice to tell him. And then he'd even gotten upset on his behalf - Yusei could vividly see in his mind the second Judai registered what he'd told him, his eyes flashing onto him protectively as his grip on him tightened and an angry scowl starting to form on his face. And then once he calmed him down, he was smothered in kisses and love for a solid hour and a half. And now Judai'd made him breakfast with extra of his favorites.

Honestly, he'd feel a little bad if it weren't for the fact that he _knew_ being able to do this for him was making Judai ecstatic beyond belief.

"So, what did you feel like doing today?" Judai asked once they'd both finished, stacking the plate on top of each other and swiping them away before Yusei could even try to grab them to help. The exasperated look he sent him was answered with a mischievous grin as Judai went and started washing them.

"Don't know," Yusei hummed, trying to think of something but coming up blank, "All I know is that I don't want to just sit in bed 'cause I've had enough of that the last few days, thanks to a certain someone."

"Hey, you were sick so you were on bed rest, that's not my fault."

"You didn't let me get up to do anything except go to the bathroom, I could practically feel my legs deteriorating."

Judai rolled his eyes with a snort in response, letting silence fall over them again aside from the occasional clacking of dishes and the sound of running water. Thunder was still rolling, but thanks to Judai the windows were blacked out, making it so none of the lightning flashes could get through.

Once Judai finished, he turned around and walked back over, pulling Yusei into a hug and playing lightly with his hair, saying, "Maybe we could play DDO? You won't _feel_ like you're just lying in bed, at least."

"Alright," Yusei agreed. He let out an involuntary twitch when a sudden, loud crack of thunder rang out, which Judai noticed easily due to the hug. Judai's hand found its way to the side of his face, gently tilting his head up for once by the chin so he could kiss him softly, his other hand starting to scratch lightly at the sensitive part of his neck just below where it met his head.

Suddenly, he was pulled up and off the chair, still being kissed as Judai started walking out of the kitchen holding him bridal-style. Considering how Judai then plopped them both on the couch with Yusei still curled up in his arms and hanging off of him, and the lack of letting Yusei go afterwards while coaxing his mouth open to deepen the kiss... it'd be a while before they got upstairs to play.


	138. Back to Work

_**5/18/19**_

The next day came with an email describing what needed to be done next for his work and the next deadline, so it was time for Yusei to get back to work.

Or at least, he was trying to.

"Judai, I'm fine," Yusei said, giving him a reassuring smile in the hopes that he'd let him get started on his project soon. He wanted to get down the basic guidelines today and figure out where he was going with it at least - if he did, then he'd be able to work at the same pace as last time and finish early.

"But-"

"-It'll just make it harder for me to focus, and I'm plenty warm enough as is. I'm wearing the hoodie you got me, after all."

Judai pouted, waving the blanket he was holding around in frustration, "I know but, just one won't hurt, right? And why would it be hard to focus?"

"Because I'd have to keep adjusting it every time I moved my arms," Yusei explained with a sigh, "You know I zone out whenever I get into my work, it'd probably just end up on the ground."

"Even if you put it in your lap?" Judai tried suggesting, poking at his cheek with a finger, "You don't move your legs much at all, that should be fine, right?"

Yusei just stared at him before sighing again, though this time resignedly, "You're not gonna stop until I agree, are you?"

"Nope!" Judai grinned happily, pushing the blanket back towards him, "It'll make me feel infinitely better if you just put it in your lap. The last thing you need is your sickness coming back on accident."

"I don't think that's how it works, Judai."

"Too bad, it does now. I made sure all day yesterday to keep you warm and stuff, and since I can't do the same thing today without distracting you from doing anything I figured a blanket would suffice."

Well, it's not like it wasn't true - Judai was very distracting and could pull him out from just about anything he was focusing on. When he put it like that, he couldn't really argue because a blanket was much more conducive towards getting his work done.

"Fine, give it here," Yusei relented, holding out his hands for the blanket and earning himself a bright, sunny smile from Judai.

"Thanks!" Judai cheered, handing it over quickly and nodding in approval once he'd spread it out sufficiently enough over himself, "Now, is that so bad?"

"...Not right now, but we'll see I guess," Yusei stated, pecking Judai on the lips with a small smile before turning to his laptop.

"That's all I ask for," Judai said, giving him a quick hug in return and a peck on the cheek before going towards the kitchen, "You want hot tea, cold tea, or coffee?"

"Coffee please," Yusei replied, sending him a grateful smile that he was happy to see made the other's eyes light up more, "With milk."

"Can't forget the milk, huh?" Judai mused, thinking for a moment before laughing and teasing, "Man, instead of using oil for those gears in your head you've been using milk! I've figured out your secret, mister."

Yusei rolled his eyes, but he knew Judai was still able to hear the quiet chuckle he gave in response; he couldn't help it, sometimes the things Judai thought of were just completely ridiculous and yet ended up being greatly amusing despite that.

...It was rather nice having his lap so warm while working. He should thank Judai later for looking out for him.


	139. Spirit Theory

_**5/19/19**_

During one of his breaks while cuddling with Judai, his head lying comfortably in his lap on the couch while Judai's fingers threaded through his hair idly, Yusei remembered a stray line of thought that he'd had while working. Right now the labs were wanting even more information about duel energy and its properties and reactions to certain things, which led him to thinking about other possibilities to think about later before he got back to work.

"Hey Judai?" Yusei started, not bothering to open his eyes because he was too comfortable at the moment and knew he'd have to get up in roughly ten minutes if he wanted to stick to the tentative schedule he'd mentally formed for himself; it would be a long enough break at that point to make Judai happy with him as well.

Judai hummed in acknowledgment, his hand pausing for a moment in his hair before resuming its ministrations.

"All this study and research about duel energy got me thinking, and this might be pulling at strings here, but... is Haou able to manifest as a spirit like duel monsters?" Yusei asked, feeling Judai tense slightly at the question, presumably in thought, "You said you'd fused souls with Yubel and that he'd already been there; theoretically Yubel shouldn't even be able to form as a spirit in the first place due to the way duel energy interacts with people and duel spirits, yet she's able to anyway. So, _theoretically,_ because all three of you are technically sharing the the same soul, shouldn't he be able to as well? And then when he's in control of your body, shouldn't _you_ be able to exist as a spirit if we're going by that logic? It's all duel energy that's at work here, so taking that into account-"

"Holy shit," Judai breathed, prompting Yusei to pause in his explanation and finally open his eyes to look at him in confusion. He was met with wide chocolate eyes staring at him from above, Judai's hand falling out of his hair to grip at his shoulder instead as he continued, "Holy shit you're a genius. How did we not think of that? You need to rant more often to me, Yusei."

"...Okay?" Yusei replied, feeling a bit lost.

"Four years, _four years_ , and we never thought of it that way at all," Judai explained, evidently seeing his puzzled expression, "It feels so blatantly obvious now, but it was just something we'd accepted - that Haou didn't have a spirit form. It never even crossed our minds to try."

"Technically all three of you would, if my theory is correct that is," Yusei said, sitting up and stretching as he talked, "It's because you're half-duel monster. You're not two humans and a monster that happen to share a soul, you're-"

"-three individuals that reside in the same half-human, half-duel monster," Judai finished excitedly, causing Yusei to smile eagerly in response because he'd understood where he was going with this, "We were only thinking of Haou as human, not half-duel monster like... well, all three of us technically are now. Therefore, he should be able to appear outside!"

They both startled at the same time when Haou and Yubel both suddenly did so, with Haou looking down at his form in slight surprise. The man was wearing black everything, including the black, high-collar shirt that Judai had been wearing when he was travelling, though he also had a red cape attached at the shoulders that flowed down and ended just after reaching his ankles.

"...Well, guess that proves my theory correct," Yusei mused, tilting his head in thought, "The outfit's probably based on how you think of yourself. I'm guessing if Judai were to do it that he'd just be in whatever he was wearing at the time."

"Makes sense," Haou stated, studying his form curiously. Yubel floated next to him and gave him a test poke to the shoulder, which ended up pushing him slightly as if he were physical.

How did that work? Was it because it was duel energy from the same soul? Or was it because they were both spirits? If Judai poked him, would he be able to physically affect him as well or would it just pass through? What if he were to-

A hand cupping his cheek and turning his face to the side brought him back to awareness, Judai giving him a silly grin being the first thing he saw.

"You were doing the look again," Judai said cheekily, squishing his cheek lightly to tease him, "Tell ya what, we'll play around with this new discovery while you go back to work, and once you're done for the day we'll tell you all about what we figured out and tested, okay? You don't need to dissect us right now, you can do it later after we've already figured out the basics."

"You make it sound like I'm using you as a guinea pig for an experiment or something," Yusei muttered, glaring at all three when they chuckled in amusement, "I'm _not_."

"I know," Judai soothed, pulling him into his lap for a quick hug and a peck to the cheek, "But you do need to work. Maybe you'll figure out more questions while you're doing so."

Yusei leaned into him with a sigh, suddenly very reluctant to go back to work for once - damn it, he should've waited to ask about it until after dinner. Then at least he wouldn't be stuck wanting to learn about it but having to work instead, even if it was more stuff about duel energy that might help him understand how it was possible in the first place.

But Judai convinced him he'd be fine, making him smile and laugh and feel better with a bunch of eskimo kisses, so it was back to work he went as he did his best to shove all thoughts about the matter out of his mind.


	140. Spirit Mischief

_**5/20/19**_

"Alright, what did you guys find out?" Yusei asked hours later, sitting down in the kitchen and happily digging into the plate of food Judai had set in front of him earlier - he'd been getting really good recently at predicting when Yusei would finish with work for the day so that dinner was ready for him when he did, and he greatly appreciated the thought given to him; it was little things like that that really cemented in his head just how much he loved him.

"I can interact with him like Yubel can and he can channel our powers in that form, but he can't turn physical himself," Judai listed, counting off on his fingers as he leaned on the table, "Other duel spirits can interact with him too, and we tried the switching thing and yes, I can apparently also manifest."

Yusei nodded in response, checking off a few questions in the mental list he'd formed while continuing to eat. He'd still have to check on whether he could interact with them as spirits or if it was something connected to how they shared a soul, or if it was just a duel spirit thing in general. And could they make it so they could be seen by other people, even if they weren't able to turn physical? Their powers opened up a lot of questions, especially since he wasn't sure even Judai knew the full extent of what he could do with them.

Speaking of the Gentle Darkness, how did it interact with duel energy anyway? Not just that, but hadn't Judai mentioned something about how their energy cores were special in some way?

"How many more questions did you just come up with?" Judai teased, poking him in the arm with a grin.

"A few," Yusei admitted, smiling at how Judai chuckled and ruffled his hair in response.

The sound of a door opening caught their attention, and Yusei watched as Haou floated over to the entrance of the kitchen and started smirking at what he found.

"Atlas," Haou stated, narrowing his eyes slightly as he crossed his arms and seemingly started to think through something, "I could... yes, I can mess with him now, very easily."

Yusei shared a look with Judai before starting to finish the rest of his food quickly so that they could abandon the kitchen and hide away upstairs; Judai got to work putting some hot tea into two of the travel mugs so they didn't have to worry about spilling them as they went upstairs.

"...The fuck? Where that come from- ow! What just poked the back of my head?!"

If Haou was having this much fun messing with people as a spirit, Yusei could only imagine what Judai would be like if they were switched. Maybe it was a good thing Haou didn't switch with him too often.

"Damage control or no?" Judai asked quietly, leaning close to his ear from behind him.

"Later. Much later," Yusei replied, putting the last bite of food in his mouth before getting up and leaving it in the sink. He sent Judai a thankful smile and gave him a quick kiss when he was given one of the travel mugs, then proceeded to hold his hand and let him guide him up the stairs and past Jack, who never noticed anything because Judai had covered them with shadows.

Yusei would just have to study later - it was much, much easier to just let Haou have his fun. In the meantime, he and Judai would have some fun of their own secretly taking some video of Jack seemingly going insane from the stuff Haou was pulling on him.


	141. Out of the Bag

_**5/21/19**_

"...Why does it feel like I'm coming back to crazy shit every other day now?" Crow muttered, shutting the apartment door idly with a foot while staring at yet another ridiculous scene in the living room.

"You say that like you didn't already," Yusei replied, raising an eyebrow at him from where he was sitting at his desk. Judai had pulled over another chair so he could sit next to him, and they were both just drinking tea and enjoying the show at this point - they'd done their duty and mounted the cameras up, which Judai was currently hiding, so they were free to show themselves and comment occasionally whenever something interesting happened.

"Not on this level, though," Crow argued, eyeing the currently frustrated-beyond-belief Jack Atlas that was turning in circles in the living room in a silent fury, "What happened this time?"

"Shh, that'll ruin the fun of it when it's finally revealed," Judai winked, holding a finger up to his lips with a smile. Unfortunately, he happened to do this the moment that Jack was looking at him, so he was instantly in their faces.

"What. Is. Happening?" Jack fumed, his fingers twitching as he glared at all three of them, "You _know_ , so _tell me_."

Yusei glanced behind him at Haou, who was floating halfway up in the air with a wicked grin on face, not that Crow or Jack could see him. They probably shouldn't have let this go on so long since Jack seemed to be starting to get genuinely angry (which, believe it or not, was a rarer occurrence than you'd think), so he caught Judai's eye and gave him a look.

Judai seemed to understand what he was implying, glancing quickly between Jack and Haou before sighing and conceding to end the shenanigans.

"We figured out today, thanks to Yusei here, that Haou can move around as a kind-of duel spirit," Judai answered lightly, gesturing around the room with his hands, "And interact with things, even if he can't become physical."

" _That motherfucker-_ " Jack growled, spinning around on his heel and pointing ahead of him, ironically straight at where Haou would be if he weren't halfway up in the air, "He's right fucking behind me, isn't he?! Damn it!"

"I'm surprised he guessed so well," Haou mused, floating down so he could flick at the finger being pointed at him, earning another scowl from Jack.

"I wouldn't be surprised if all the signers, regardless of powers, had some sort of sense for spirits at least," Yubel said next to him, grinning down at Jack's flailing, "That Crimson Dragon is still connected to them, it'd make sense if that connection made them sensitive to duel energy and spirits at least."

That... Yusei hadn't thought of that before. Yet another one for the list of questions to test and hopefully answer, this was proving to be a very educational day.

"Well, good for him at least. I imagine this is him essentially going on a freedom high," Crow said, turning to look at them with a grin.

"That's a good way of putting it! Yeah, he's pretty much as ecstatic as he's possible of being right now," Judai replied, snapping his fingers together at the words. Yusei nodded along, fully agreeing; one look at Haou's smirk was enough to tell anyone that he was having one hell of a time at the moment.

Crow studied them for a few seconds, looking between Yusei and Judai in a way that reminded Yusei a lot of when he'd walked in on Yusei starting to use his alarms. This did _not_ bode well for them, especially when he narrowed his eyes and then bore a smirk not un-similar to the one Haou was sporting right now.

"Also, you guys already have the whole 'Conversation with a single look' thing down, how cute," Crow teased, laughing when Judai started stuttering out an attempt to respond while Yusei simply stared at him with wide-eyes speechlessly.

Had they really done that? Thinking back to a minute ago... stars, they _had_ done that kind-of thing, hadn't they?

It was a little embarrassing since Crow had brought it up in jest, but the thought brought an honest smile to Yusei's face as he watched Judai start to mock fight with Crow in retaliation.

It made him happy that they could read each other that well, and so easily too without realizing it - it brought about a certain comfort and warmth that Yusei latched onto and never wanted to let go.


	142. Flying

_**5/22/19**_

It was another quiet day, with Yusei doing his usual work on his laptop while Judai found various ways to entertain himself, whether through crafts, puzzles, or whatever else caught his fancy at the time; there were a lot of new things to try out that had been made in the twenty years he jumped past, and he used their VR headsets for a lot more games than just DDO now that he had money to burn through without worry. They were all mostly single player though, since he had a feeling Yusei wouldn't really be interested in most of them besides possibly the ones with magic or sci-fi elements in them.

Some of the games were good, but DDO really stuck out still due to the immersion and almost complete lack of (at least visible) glitches or bugs. He really liked one of them that was essentially a classic MMORPG grind since it reminded him of some of the games he used to play when he was a kid, and he was slowly climbing the leader-boards thanks to that interest even if he didn't play often enough to really rank high... then again, his experience with fighting was proving to be useful even in games now, because the VR game was fully immersive and he could move his body without any limitations.

The gist of it? Judai was unbeatable in PvP duels, even with low gear, because he almost never got hit enough to take much damage. Especially in one of the games that had air duels.

"Haven't done that in a while," Judai muttered to himself, taking the headset off after playing for an hour or two to pass the time.

"Done what?" Yusei asked from next to him on the couch, causing him to jolt slightly in surprise.

"When did you get there?" Judai stated, pouting when Yusei chuckled at his reaction, "Anyway... I was playing a game where you fight in the air."

"With... with wings?" Yusei questioned, tilting his head curiously.

"With wings," Judai confirmed, giving him a little grin while Yusei put the dots together.

"You've fought in the air before? With wings?" Yusei asked, eyes widening a bit in surprise.

"You bet'cha!" Judai replied, winking at him with a wide grin now, "Only 'cause Yubel has wings, though - I can transform a little thanks to her. Can get some claws, too, but that's about it." He saw the way Yusei's eyes seemed to light up slightly, and he continued saying, "I can take you flying some time, but we'll have to do it at night."

Yusei nodded eagerly in agreement, "So there's less chance of anyone seeing, good idea. It's a date then."

"A date in the sky, huh?" Judai mused cheerfully, leaning in to peck Yusei on the cheek, "Sounds fun."

"Ah... now that I think about it, I've sort-of flown before, but... I couldn't really enjoy it at the time considering the circumstances," Yusei stated, looking up in thought, "It was the last duel I did that prevented the city from being destroyed."

"Wait, you dueled in the sky?" Judai asked, staring at him incredulously. How in the world did that work? Didn't he say once before that all his duels were riding duels?

Yusei seemed to pause at the question, glancing at him and opening his mouth slightly as if to explain before closing it again. He did this a few times before finally saying, "Okay, that does sound ridiculous, I know, but it's true. I... I dueled in the sky on a flying motorcycle."

The image that brought to Judai's head was too hilarious for him to hold back a laugh, and soon enough he was rolling around the couch in hysterics.

"Pfft, a- a flying motorcycle! And- and you _dueled_ on it! And-"

"It was- it was technically not _flying_ because it was riding on energy or- or something like that and I could maneuver it and everything!" Yusei retorted, face turning pink as he tried to defend himself, "And gravity was already messed up because of the second city in the sky and all the debris that was floating around and-"

"So it was floating and flying?! And energy?! D-Did you have a shiny glowy energy aura around you too because of that energy?"

Yusei mumbled something in response, so quietly and unintelligibly that even Judai couldn't make out what he'd said.

"A bit louder please?" Judai asked, trying to reign in his laughter so that Yusei would actually tell him what he'd said.

Yusei narrowed his eyes at him for a few moments, pursing his lips slightly as he tried to decide whether or not to tell him before finally relenting, "I may have... turned completely golden at one point... along with the bike..."

Judai honestly tried not to laugh, biting his tongue and everything, but a few seconds later he'd already broken down into crying laughter again. Yusei shook him back and forth with the cutest embarrassed expression while trying to get him to shut up, which only ended up being the icing on top for the whole conversation, ultimately making him laugh harder.


	143. Unexpected Visitor

_**5/23/19**_

For once, everyone was home for dinner, so they all gathered in the kitchen for a buffet-style dinner. Crow and Jack were catching them up to speed on how their work was coming along, with Crow complaining about a bossy client he'd had that day and Jack confirming that indeed had _not_ gotten fired yet. Judai regaled them with tales of his prowess in his PvP VR games for the day, which served to gain at least Crow's interest; Jack was more interested in the fact that Yusei had decided to work for a bit on their runners that day and tune them up.

In the middle of all that, a loud tap came from the kitchen window, startling everyone at the table. Simultaneously, they all turned their heads to look warily at the window, which didn't seem to have anything out of the ordinary in its view.

"...That sounded like a rock," Crow stated, everyone narrowing their eyes as they stared at the window in thought.

"Why would someone throw a rock at our window, though?" Judai muttered, getting shrugs from around the table.

"Maybe its just some kids playing or something, who knows," Jack huffed, rolling his eyes as he went back to his food, "If it happens a few more times, then we go out and yell at 'em."

"I'm just glad it's not broken," Yusei mused, not looking too worried now that the initial surprise was gone. He gave Judai a smile when he caught his eye before going back to his food as well.

Still, something felt... off to Judai. He wasn't entirely sure _why_ that was, but if there was one thing he trusted, it was his gut instinct.

 _Can one of you go through the wall real fast and check?_ Judai asked in his head, earning a sigh from Haou as he wordlessly appeared next to Judai and floated over to poke his head through the window. After a few moments, he pulled back, surprisingly not giving Judai an exasperated, judgmental stare.

" _Judai, open the window_ ," Haou said, looking at him with a serious expression.

Judai blinked in surprise, saying, "Wait, what? Really?"

"Judai?" Crow asked curiously, him and Jack giving his a confused look at his sudden questions.

"Haou told him to open the window for some reason," Yusei explained for him, looking a bit confused as well.

" _Yes, really,_ " Haou repeated, moving off to the side so that Judai didn't bump into him on the way to the window, considering he was physical to him.

Judai opened the window, pushing it outwards since it was one of the ones that did so and latched at the bottom when it was closed. At first glance, there didn't seem to be anything that stood out amongst the usual traffic and buildings, but then a little blurb of brown caught his eye off to the side of the apartment building, curled up in a ball but staring at him regardless.

"Holy crap, is that Pharaoh?!" Judai exclaimed, staring slack-jawed at the cat down below in shock, "How the hell is he here?! I thought he decided to stay in the spirit realm that one time!"

"Uh, who's... Pharaoh? Is that what you said?" Crow asked, though Judai barely answered before he was putting on his shoes so he could run down to go get him.

"My cat!"

"Wait, what? You have a _cat_?" Jack asked incredulously, standing up as well to go follow him, "I have to see this."

"I... vaguely remember him saying something about a cat and his Duel Academy professor's soul?" Yusei spoke up, the sound of multiple chairs moving backwards telling Judai that all of them were going to follow him. He slowed down his pace a little bit to give them a chance to catch up in return.

"Now I'm even more curious," Crow stated, the other two both humming in agreement.

And so, a few seconds later Judai excitedly ran down the stairs, the trio following behind him as best they could.

 _...Hopefully none of them are allergic to cats_ , Judai thought to himself, _They should be fine if they're all coming along, right?_

 _Actually, wait, what I should be asking is why in the world that cat threw a freaking rock at our window! Why?!_


	144. Pharaoh the Cat

_**5/24/19**_

To Judai's surprise, the notoriously lazy cat actually _ran_ up to him when he came into view, mewling happily and licking his hand when he picked him up and starting scratching him behind the ear.

"Did'ya miss me that much?" Judai grinned, reaching out to the feline with a little bit of shadow magic to check him over for anything unusual and being met with only a couple changes.

Professor Daitokuji's soul being gone save for some lasting remnants was the most obvious one, though.

"Did he finally move on?" he mumbled, getting a slight shake of the head from Pharaoh, "No? What happened then?"

Pharaoh just meowed at him more, pushing his head further into his hand and begging for more pets, which Judai laughed at but obliged anyway.

"So this is the cat?" Crow asked, the three following him finally catching up as they turned around the corner of the apartment building. This earned Pharaoh's attention, turning his head to look at the newcomers while Crow continued on to whistle at him, "Damn, that's one fat cat. He must be one happy kitty."

"Yeah, he somehow managed to always be spoiled rotten, even when he was travelling with me all over the place," Judai agreed, turning Pharaoh around in his arms to face them, "Anyway, this is Pharaoh. He can sort-of understand you - it depends on what you're talking about, and sometimes he'll deign to answer any yes or no questions you ask him."

"Smart cat," Yusei stated, coming close enough to pet Pharaoh, which Judai could tell immediately put him on the cat's good side because Pharaoh didn't try to scratch him or anything. Seeing this, Judai gestured for Yusei to take Pharaoh, giving him an encouraging smile when Yusei gave him a hesitant look; soon enough Yusei was holding Pharaoh close to his chest and having a field day petting him.

It was so adorable Judai felt like he was going to die from the cuteness. Yusei's eyes were lit up in a mixture of curiousness and amazement, and Pharaoh was back to being a spoiled fluff-ball that was bathing in the attention being given to him.

"You're lucky this apartment allows pets," Jack said, eyeing the cat as it practically went limp in Yusei's arms when Crow finally walked over and started petting Pharaoh too, "Now, I have a question. How the hell is that thing alive?"

"Magic," Judai shrugged, though he relented and explained a bit more when he got exasperated stares from all of them, "Okay okay, it's seriously partially magic - his exposure to people that played around with it made him slightly magical. It's part of why he's so smart, but the other is that he's been harboring my old professor's soul for so long that he ages slower. He doesn't have it anymore apparently, but I can feel the energy it left behind - Pharaoh's got a few years ahead of him still. Oh, he can also see duel spirits, if that wasn't obvious."

"...I don't think I wanna know about the whole soul thing, but what I'm getting from this is that you have a magic cat as a pet," Crow concluded, raising an eyebrow down at the cat under his hand before shrugging and continuing to pet him, "Good enough explanation for me. Make him a corner in the living room, magic cats are cool." He suddenly paused, giving Pharaoh a look before asking him, "You're not gonna chase after my Blackwings, are ya?"

Pharaoh stared back at him for a few seconds before shaking his head again, getting a grin from Crow. Jack looked just about done with everything upon seeing the interaction, huffing slightly and muttering something about magic under his breath.

"Wow, Pharaoh _really_ likes you two," Judai noted, tilting his head in slight confusion, "I don't think I've ever seen him this way with people that are basically strangers to him." It was... odd. Maybe it had something to do with duel energy?

Or... oh, that made a bit more sense.

 _You guys think he can sense that Yusei's a King of Games?_ Judai asked mentally.

" _Ooooh, I see where you're going with this_ ," Yubel grinned, nodding approvingly in the back of his mind, " _The title is magic, and Pharaoh can sense magic really well. It wouldn't be surprising if the damn cat was attracted to people with high concentrations of magic_."

" _...That explains why the stupid thing would practically latch onto me whenever I took over,_ " Haou said. Judai was greatly amused by the annoyance that welled up from him as Haou remembered those times - Pharaoh wouldn't leave his side, would absolutely refuse to get back in the bag, and would actually climb up his leg if he was ignored. Very, very unusual behavior for the lazy cat.

Either way, Jack broke the moment by turning on his heel, saying, "Okay, we got the cat, let's go back. I don't know about you guys, but I'm starving and there's no way I'm letting the food go cold."

Everyone perked up at the reminder, immediately following after him.

To Judai's amusement, Yusei not-so-secretly snuck Pharaoh scraps under the table - there's no way Yusei _wasn't_ one of Pharaoh's favorite people now.


	145. Pharaoh's Corner

_**5/25/19**_

The next evening, Pharaoh got to lounge around in his brand-new, plushy cat bed with brand-new blankets while using a chew-toy as a pillow to sleep on. Judai, Yusei, and Crow were all looking on in amusement; they'd made an adventure out of going to the pet store and arguing over what to buy to decorate the corner of the room with, and ultimately walked out with some of the high-quality stuff.

Judai had been against it, honestly, but Yusei and Crow had out-voted him and shoved premium cat food at him in the end. Thank the stars he had the money for all this stuff, because otherwise he'd be a bit more worried about it all - as it was though, he'd merely been against it for the sake of at least _trying_ not to spoil the cat any more rotten than he already was.

"Y'know, I don't think I've ever seen him in a domestic setting like this before," Judai mused, taking in the new sight with a smile, "Back at the academy he just roamed around outside and did whatever he wanted, and then while we were travelling there wasn't really a time for something like this to happen."

"Kinda like a barn cat or something?" Crow blinked, glancing over Pharaoh's sleeping form with a slightly more critical eye, "Don't those kinds of cats get a lot of exercise and stuff? How is he so... _big_ then?"

"Lots of barn cats and the like get fat, it's normal," Yusei replied, prompting both Judai and Crow to look at him with raised eyebrows. He looked back at them with a slightly defensive stare, asking, "...What? It's from them eating mice and stuff, they gain weight from doing their job essentially."

"Why do you know this?" Crow asked. Judai tilted his head curiously in agreement, wanting to know the reason as well, though he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew why - he just wanted it confirmed.

"I just- I happened to read about it once, that's all," Yusei answered, narrowing his eyes at them. He couldn't hide the very quick look off to the side that he made, though, which told them that he was omitting something.

"Sure, that's all," Judai hummed teasingly, a little grin appearing on his face as he continued on to explain his theory, "You just like cats, don't you? Bet you looked up everything you could about them and ended up liking the big and fluffy ones."

The embarrassed heat that slowly climbed up Yusei's face was more than enough of an answer, and both Judai and Crow couldn't help but chuckle at his expense.

"Aw come on, we all have a favorite type of animal," Crow said after a bit, patting Yusei on the back in apology for laughing, "I know a bit too much about crows and other types of birds, I certainly can't judge you for liking cats."

"I like cats a lot too, but I never really took the time to learn about them, mostly because Pharaoh is so independent," Judai admitted, coming up on Yusei's other side and doing his best to sling an arm over his shoulder, "It's good that you know all that stuff, that means you can stop us from doing something wrong when taking care of him."

Yusei smiled a little at this, evidently feeling a little better about their teasing because he replied back by saying, "You'd probably end up feeding him chocolate or something, which is poisonous to them. And most cats are lactose intolerant."

"Wait, what?" Both Crow and Judai gaped at him in surprise, causing him to laugh at them this time instead.

"Yeah, milk's not good for adults most of the time because of that," Yusei chuckled, giving them both a light punch to the arm for emphasis, "So don't go giving him milk, even if he's magical and would probably be okay. It'll still cause stomach aches and contribute to making him fatter."

"...Okay, y'know what? Let me go get a notebook and write all this down, maybe then I'll remember it," Judai said after a few seconds of staring in amazement, Crow nodding along with him in agreement.

They learned _way_ more about cats that day from Yusei than they could have imagined... and it was all straight from his memory, too.

Judai couldn't help but wonder if Yusei's love for cats spawned from his comparison of him to a cat, though. He liked to think that was the case, because if it was, then that was simply _adorable_.


	146. Cat Treats

_**5/26/19**_

Yusei blinked in the kitchen during one of his breaks the next day at the sight of Pharaoh staring out the window, then turning to stare at him with a quiet meow. A paw batted at the glass, luckily without any claws out, while the cat continued to stare relentlessly at him.

"Did... you want outside?" Yusei asked, tilting his head slightly at the question. Pharaoh nodded in response, which made him pause once again before replying, "I should probably ask Judai first. Sorry."

Pharaoh meowed at him again, pawing the window in emphasis before seeming to change his mind and jump off the window sill. He rubbed up against his legs, prompting Yusei to smile and lean down to pet him.

When he rolled over onto his back, Yusei let out a soft chuckle and obliged, eventually saying, "We got treats yesterday at the store."

The cat immediately rolled back onto his feet, cozy-ing back up to him as if he wasn't already going to give him some anyway. He meowed quietly as Yusei picked him up, his fluffy tail batting lazily against his arm as he rustled through the cabinets and tried to remember where they put the treats; said treats were the high-quality ones, of course, because Yusei and Crow insisted on them.

...Maybe they _were_ spoiling the cat a bit too much, but Yusei was just happy and excited that the cat existed in the first place - it helped that Pharaoh was incredibly smart, too.

Crow walked into the kitchen the moment Yusei found the box of treats, and upon spying the cat in one of his arms and the box in the other his face lit up with a grin, "Oooh, let me in on this. I wanna give him one, too."

Pharaoh meowed once again as he approached, Crow scratching him behind the ears while Yusei put him down on the counter so he could tear open the treats.

"Here, we should probably split one - they're pretty big," Yusei said, snapping one of the treats in half; he found it far more amusing than he probably should have that they were shaped like gingerbread men.

"Good idea," Crow agreed, taking the bottom half of the broken treat and holding it out to Pharaoh, "Here ya go, you cute fluff-ball. Chicken flavor and everything, just for you."

Yusei wasn't sure whether he expected Pharaoh to pounce on his hand or not, but he smiled upon seeing Pharaoh give the treat a quick sniff before gently pulling it out of Crow's hand and chowing down on it the second it cleared his fingers. Once the cat had finished that one, Yusei opted to hold out his half on the palm of his hand; he watched on with interest as Pharaoh carefully lifted it out of his palm before crunching it above his hand, surprisingly not letting any crumbs fall down.

"I see you guys have already started spoiling him for the day," Judai said suddenly, startling both of them since they hadn't heard him come in the room.

"Hey, I walked in here like, two minutes ago and Yusei was in the process of getting the treats out anyway," Crow retorted, unashamedly grinning and pointing at Yusei with a thumb, "Don't blame me, blame him."

"How could I not give him any, he rolled over for belly rubs and everything," Yusei defended, pouting slightly before smiling once again at the feeling of Pharaoh rubbing up against his hand, which was still hovering over the counter near him, "You see this? See what I mean?"

"Careful there Yusei, Judai might start to get jealous if you keep sayin' stuff like that," Crow teased, Judai immediately hopping on-board the second it came out of his mouth.

"Yeah, might start thinkin' you love the cat more than me!" Judai exclaimed, a toothy grin taking up his face as he walked over and picked up Pharaoh, who curled up into his arms without any hesitation.

"You guys are mean," Yusei sighed, feeling his face warm slightly at the teasing before he suddenly remembered what Pharaoh had wanted earlier thanks to Judai showing up, "On another note... Judai, Pharaoh wanted to go outside. Through the kitchen window."

"Oh," Judai blinked, looking down at Pharaoh, who merely stared back up at him, "Yeah that's fine, just if you do make sure you re-open it like... an hour or so later. You're not going to stay outside for more than two hours, got it Pharaoh? Can't have us having to search for you in the city... hell, maybe we should finally put a collar or something on you. Or get you micro-chipped, just in case."

Pharaoh somehow managed to pull off a glare at Judai, which Yusei found hilariously cute because it made the cat's face scrunch up a lot.

"Yeah, no, we'll just get you micro-chipped if you keep glaring at me like that."

And thus, Yusei and Crow watched with great amusement as Judai argued with a cat for a solid fifteen minutes.


	147. Tracking Method

_**5/27/19**_

"I'm back!~"

Yusei looked up at the sound of Judai's arrival, immediately eyeing the bag in his hands with interest; he'd left to go get Pharaoh a collar and a tag for it with their information on it, just in case they ever lost him to the city somewhere.

"Hey, you find everything alright?" Yusei asked, leaning back in his chair and giving out an involuntary yawn as he pushed away from the desk. Judai was quick to walk over to him and lean down give him a peck on the lips, making him smile at the greeting.

"Yup! Did you know they make tags now that you can track with your phone? And they have these cool tag-making machine things that laser-print out metal tags on the spot, it's super cool!" Judai grinned, sitting on one of the chair arms and holding out the bag for Yusei to take, "Here, I think I picked some good ones - take a look."

Yusei did so, pulling out a plastic case first that contained the tag and laughing slightly at the kind Judai had chosen - it was very clearly Winged Kuriboh-shaped, and on one side had 'Pharaoh" written out while the other had a phone number to call if found. When he pulled out the collar, he was even more amused because once again, Judai had managed to somehow find _something_ Stardust Dragon related to decorate with; the dark blue collar had little prints of Stardust all over it, in different poses and doing different things.

"I feel like he's going to be a bit miffed that we're essentially putting duel monster pictures on him," Yusei stated, causing Judai to laugh loudly in response.

"Aw man, that's one of the best parts though!" Judai exclaimed, catching himself from falling off the chair arm before continuing, "I just call it karma for that cat being so freakin' lazy and not wanting a collar in the first place. I need _something_ to keep track of him with, especially now that we're in the city to stay."

"He'll get used to it," Yusei replied, putting everything back in the bag before batting Judai lightly on the back, "Come on, let's go find him - I think he's in our room right now, he was looking around since he hadn't done that earlier."

Judai hummed in agreement, hopping off the chair with a little laugh before suddenly perking up, going through his pockets and pulling out a little card, "Oh yeah, before I forget - here, shove the number on this in a password manager or something so we don't lose it. It's the number associated with the tag so we can look up his location on the website on there should we ever need to."

"Will do," Yusei said, taking the card and putting it in his pocket for now before giving Judai a mischievous grin, "Now really, let's go. I wanna see Pharaoh with that collar on."

"Yes," Judai replied, matching his grin easily as his eyes lit up, "Just to make sure, all the windows are closed right now, right?"

"Yup."

"Alright, let's go. You close the door on the way in while I try to grab him, he's definitely going to try and make a run for it."

Yusei had a feeling that running into the door seconds after it'd closed was a brand-new experience for Pharaoh, considering how little that cat seemed to run. All in all though, once they finally got the collar and tag on, they both sat on the bed and spent quite a bit of time taking pictures of the extremely grumpy cat and talking about how cute Pharaoh was with it on.

Now if only Yusei didn't have to worry about the looks Judai was giving him and trying to hide. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what he was thinking this time, so he let him think he was getting away with it.


	148. Pharaoh's Owner

_**5/28/19**_

After an hour or so, Pharaoh finally got used to the collar for the most part, only picking at it occasionally instead of trying to tear it off constantly. Yusei was lying down on the bed, his head in Judai's lap while Pharaoh rested on his stomach, and both of them were enjoying the feeling of having their heads scratched.

Yusei opened his eyes for the first time since lying down, and upon seeing Judai's sparkling eyes and bit-back grin, gave him a tiny glare, "Not a word."

Judai looked off to the side, not saying anything in response and simply smiling wider while still biting his lip as if to keep from laughing. Luckily he didn't pursue the matter any more though, and eventually his smile turned into a small, relaxed one that Yusei loved - he'd been able to see it a lot more recently, which was a stark contrast to the beginning, where Judai's smiles always seemed to be tainted with some sort of sadness or felt faked.

The utter fondness in Judai's expression was a huge part of why Yusei loved that smile, too.

They fell into a peaceful silence for a while after, until Judai hummed softly, gaining Yusei's attention.

"Thinkin'?" Yusei asked quietly, not wanting to break through the silence too much.

Judai hummed affirmatively, looking down at him and brushing a few strands of hair away from his face before replying, "Thinkin' bout what might've happened to Pharaoh's actual owner."

"I... vaguely remember you saying something about your professor and his soul," Yusei admitted, getting a soft chuckle out of Judai.

"I didn't really say much about that, huh?" Judai agreed, moving on to explain, "You remember the shadow riders I talked about? He was one of them, it turned out, and he'd used alchemy to stay alive for a really long time. When I defeated him, Pharaoh pretty much just... ran up and chomped on his soul before he could pass on, causing them to be linked."

Yusei raised an eyebrow, looking down his chin at the cat on his stomach with a baffled look, "Pharaoh... ate him?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Sounds weird, I know, but... honestly it's not even on my top ten list at this point."

"I understand that one."

"Anyway, Pharaoh's actually his cat, but he was forced to go where Pharaoh went and Pharaoh went with me travelling, so that's what happened. Luckily we got along really well, so it's not like he wasn't a welcome addition at all," Judai shrugged, "Plus, he didn't judge Haou at all considering he was once on the opposing side too. He ended up helping a lot in teaching Haou and Yubel about the modern day."

"Sounds like he's a good person," Yusei concluded, grinning at a sudden thought and adding on, "And a good professor, it would seem."

Judai laughed at that one, ruffling his hair happily, "Best teacher I ever had! He realized pretty quickly that I was a hands-on learner, so that helped a lot... plus, once he was in spirit form he may or may not have helped me cheat a bit on some tests that he didn't agree with. Mostly tests from professors that were notorious for grading Reds like me too harshly."

Yusei narrowed his eyes, wanting to judge yet he couldn't help but think that it was probably for the best if the other professors were already rigging the test anyway. Judai just gave him an unashamed grin upon seeing his look, so he settled for an exasperated smile before motioning for him to continuing.

"Anyway, back to the point - before I time-hopped he'd opted to stay in one of the spirit realms to continue his research because this place in particular had spells and stuff that let him interact with the world as if he were solid. Pharaoh seemed to get the point and was willing to stay there so he could, so that was the last I saw of either of them until now," Judai said, glancing over at Pharaoh with a curious look, "Pharaoh said that he hadn't passed on when I asked him, which means he must've figured out something with his research. Dunno if we'll ever see him, but at least he's definitely out there somewhere."

"I'd like to meet him, if only to get more stories about the things you've done," Yusei stated, causing Judai to pout down at him and hold a hand to his chest as if he were wounded.

"Yusei, that's not fair! I've only gotten stories about you from Martha and occasionally Crow, and those don't add up to the number you've heard about me at all!" Judai complained, poking Yusei lightly in the chest with every point he made.

"It's not my fault you've got so many people excited to tell someone about your shenanigans," Yusei countered, smiling mischievously, "Haou, Yubel, all your friends... they're very eager to embarrass you, huh?"

Judai froze suddenly, staring at him like a dear caught in the headlights, "...Haou and Yubel did?"

Yusei let the silence hang in the air for a bit, building up suspense before finally asking with a smirk, "Hey Judai, what does 'fiancee' mean?"

"... _No,_ " Judai whispered, and Yusei drank in the way his whole face flushed pink, starting from his neck and reaching the tips of his ears.

"How can you tell if someone's flirting with you?" Yusei continued, snickering as Judai continued to look at him in utter embarrassment and horror, "Like that one girl in Europe when you were nineteen... oh wait, you didn't realize it at the time, did you? You hadn't had 'the talk' yet, my bad."

" _Yusei-_ " Judai whined, letting out a pained noise as he buried his face into Yusei's neck, physically dragging Yusei up so he was sitting on his lap instead so it was easier to do so. Yusei could _feel_ just how warm Judai's face was, and it only spurred him to continue asking more questions that he knew would get to him.

Eventually Judai smothered him with kisses to get him to shut up, and Yusei couldn't help but feel proud of himself for turning the tables again - his goal of being able to embarrass Judai just as often as he embarrassed him was finally starting to become a reality, it seemed.


	149. Party Etiquette

_**5/29/19**_

His phone ringing brought Yusei back to reality from the little bit of work he'd gotten started on, glancing away from his laptop to see who could possibly be calling him - it wasn't often that he got calls, and when he did they usually tended to be from the twins. Lua liked to ramble and it was easier for him to talk quickly into his ear than to try and text it all to him.

On that note, though... why in the world was he getting a call from Manjoume? At nine-thirty in the morning no less? Being dragged away from his work when he was only about an hour in made him slightly grumpy, and he was half-tempted to hang up on the spot so he could get back to work. He knew better than to do that, though.

 _Might as well just pick up and see_ , Yusei thought to himself with a sigh, taking a quick look around the room and noting that Judai still hadn't come down from their room yet.

"Hello," Yusei greeted simply, accepting the call and spinning around idly in his chair.

"Mornin'," Manjoume responded, immediately moving onto the reason for the call without any prompting on Yusei's part, "Can you tell Judai to stop being a scaredy-cat and just accept the fact that he needs to learn etiquette for the parties? Phoenix and I need him up to snuff for the future 'cause we're sponsoring him, and we need to make sure he doesn't fuck up, so we need him to come over and take a day to learn it. We're even the ones who'd be teaching him."

"...I mean, it's pretty basic stuff isn't it? You just get on people's good sides and Judai excels at that, I kinda get why he doesn't want to be forced into etiquette lessons if he already knows it," Yusei replied, frowning to himself in confusion. The following silence afterwards was slightly ominous, if only because he didn't know Manjoume very well (other than that he had a temper to rival Jack's) so he couldn't tell what would happen next.

" _Are you serious?_ " Manjoume practically hissed through the line, seeming to take a deep breath before asking, "Okay mister Savior, here's a pop quiz just for you - how do you properly exchange business cards with someone?"

"...I don't have business cards, I've never had to do that before?" Yusei slowly said, his confusion leaking heavily into his voice this time. What... why was he being asked _that_ of all things? Did it matter that much anyway? Wouldn't you just give the person your card and thank them when they gave you theirs?

" _Oh my god_ ," Manjoume breathed into the phone, "How the _fuck_ have you survived this long? Haven't you been forced into fancy parties and exhibitions and stuff by the government?"

"Yeah, but no one ever complained about me or anything-"

" _Because you're the goddamn freaking Savior of the city_ ," Manjoume hissed once again, cutting him off; Yusei heard furious typing in the background, and he pulled his phone away from his ear to stare at it with bewilderment.

Judai luckily showed up at that moment, the door to their room creaking open as he walked out and paused at the sight of Yusei not working and instead staring at his phone like it was something he'd never seen before in his life - at least, that's how Yusei felt at the moment, especially considering it'd been a solid two minutes since Manjoume had last said anything. Right as Judai went to say something whilst walking down the stairs, they both startled at the sound of Manjoume's voice.

"Okay, this is just... I have no words, _you_ need to come in and learn the proper etiquette too. At least you have a legitimate reason for not knowing it though, unlike Judai," Manjoume stated.

"Hey! What the hell, man?!" Judai exclaimed, quickly coming over and gesturing for Yusei to pass him the phone, which he did so gladly, "Jun, I refused so you call Yusei? And now you wanna make him go through that hell, too? You two can be merciless if you put your mind to it!"

Yusei watched and listened as they continued to argue back and forth over the phone, mulling over what Manjoume had told him. He had a good point in that Yusei had just assumed he was doing fine because no one had told him otherwise, but... he had a feeling Manjoume had somehow managed to pull up videos of him at the exhibitions he'd gone to before and found a lot wrong with what he'd done. He was right in that he wouldn't know the proper etiquette, which Yusei appreciated him recognizing the reason for, and that it was probably a good idea for him to learn it.

Besides, if anyone could convince Judai to sit and endure lessons, it's him; plus he'd be getting them as well, so they could share the pain of stifling formalities together.

"Let them teach us," Yusei stated loudly, immediately causing Judai to whip around and face him from where he'd been pacing in the middle of the room.

"What?! You _want_ to go through hell? Because it sounded to me like you just said you wanted to go through hell," Judai faltered, gaping at him in shock.

Yusei rolled his eyes at him, gesturing for him to come closer and pulling him into his lap once he did, "Yeah, well, we do need to know this stuff. Apparently I've already messed up a bunch, and I don't know about you but I don't want to deal with the knowledge that I'm that bad at it and didn't do anything to try and remedy that. We can just do it together, it won't be so bad if we do."

"Listen to your boyfriend, Judai," Manjoume said, a slightly teasing tone lacing his words and causing Judai to huff in defeat.

"Fine," Judai groaned, glaring down at the phone in his hand before saying, "Text the day you want us over to me, bye." With that he hung up, his glare melting into a pout as he looked behind himself at Yusei.

"You know it's for the best, dear," Yusei said quietly, kissing his cheek with a smile and slowly managing to pull a smile out of Judai as well.

"Yeah, I know, but it still doesn't mean I have to like the fact that it's Thunder and Phoenix teaching us," Judai admitted, snuggling further into him with a happy sigh after turning so his legs hung over one of the chair arms.

Seeing the opportunity, Yusei capitalized on the position and locked Judai in place with one arm, balancing on the other while peppering his face his eskimo kisses. Judai's beautiful laughter soon filled up the room, turning slightly breathless after a minute or so passed and Yusei still hadn't let up; once Yusei realized this, of course, he _had_ to keep going, if only to see how much Judai could actually take.


	150. Dancing

_**5/30/19**_

"Jun, I swear if you don't put that away-" Judai started, noticing the camera that had been pulled out in the corner of his eye.

"No fuckin' way, you expect me to _not_ take pictures of this comedy gold?" Jun smirked, looking like the cat that caught the canary and not minding the glare Judai was sending him in the slightest.

"Aren't you supposed to be teaching us?" Judai questioned, turning his head to look at Edo, who was looking very amused at the moment, "Damn it Phoenix, don't tell me you're on his side, too."

"Okay, I won't tell you then," Edo replied, the smile on his face just ever-so-slightly too wicked looking for the innocent tone he used.

"You cheeky bastard," Judai said, and he mentally prepared himself to grab at the camera with his shadows. Right before he could though, Yusei nudged his shoulder with a small smile on his face.

"Come on, let's just get this over with," Yusei sighed, though he continued afterwards so quietly that only Judai could hear him, "Just finesse the camera out of his pocket or something later, we're fine."

"Alright, fine," Judai pouted, giving him a look to show that he'd heard what he said. He turned to the other two and gestured for them explain what they needed to do, "Next lesson then - what is it and why do you want pictures of it?"

"Dancing, specifically basic slow dancing," Edo explained, "You both need to know it considering you're a couple and it's only a matter of time at this point until you have to attend a function together. Basics are fine for it since I have the feeling neither of you are really the dancing type, so you just have to know enough to do it once and then get out of there as fast as possible."

Judai actually perked up at this since one of the skills he'd managed to pick up on thanks to Haou and Yubel's old memories was formal dancing; he knew the steps and had even practiced with Yubel for a bit a few times when they were going through their experiences and he showed interest in it.

Most importantly though, thanks to those memories he also knew how to lead, even when he was technically not the one that was supposed to because he was shorter than his partner. As it was, Yusei was already looking slightly out of his element, and Judai was quick to grab onto his hand to reassure him.

"The taller person usual leads, so-"

"Don't worry about it," Judai interrupted, smiling easily as he waved Edo off and pulled Yusei to the center of the room for more space, "Play the music, I'll teach him."

"You know how to dance?" Yusei asked curiously, letting Judai start to position his body correctly until he was happy with the results.

"No way, I thought for sure you'd have two left feet when it comes to this," Jun said disbelieving, not able to shrug off his surprise like Edo had been able to before setting up the music.

"Nah, I know how to dance," Judai chirped happily, nudging Yusei's feet apart a bit more with his foot, "Shoulder-width, there you go. Alright, hands here and here. I'll lead you, so don't worry about that - just do your best to follow. I'll go really slow in the beginning until you start to pick up the pattern."

"Okay," Yusei replied, still looking out of his element and nervous. Judai tightened his grip on him to get him to focus more on him than anything else, which seemed to help a little bit as Yusei took a quiet deep breath once he did.

The music started up - a nice, slow song that had a good tempo for beginners. Judai grinned as he started to slowly guide Yusei through the steps, making a mental note to make Yusei do this again once they got home - practice made perfect after all, though he also wanted to do this without an audience so he wouldn't feel bad about flustering him more.

"Don't look at your feet, look at my face - it'll be easier to follow that way," Judai stated, stopping himself from saying something else that would've embarrassed both of them. Once Yusei got the hang of it, he sped up a little to a normal pace, and soon enough was even throwing little spins into it; Yusei's look of surprise every time he did so at how he was able to do it nearly flawlessly without any practice beforehand was amusing. Judai wasn't kidding when he said he could lead well.

When the song ended, Edo ended up clapping with an impressed look, which prompted Jun to sigh resignedly, "Guess you really do know how to do it."

"That was really good, looks like there's nothing we can do for you here," Edo added on, though he still looked extremely amused as he continued, "It was kind-of funny though - I wasn't expecting you to spin him, Judai, especially since he's taller than you."

"I could've done it where I was the one spinning, but where's the fun in that?" Judai smirked, laughing slightly at how Yusei's face was warming up in embarrassment, "Aw come on, don't look so embarrassed - you did perfectly fine, and if you want I'll teach ya how to lead later so you don't have to follow all the time."

"Thanks," Yusei muttered, though he only looked a tiny bit more composed by the time they were moving on to the next lesson.

Judai was already plotting out how to teach him, fully ready to exact his revenge through this for the barrage of questions and stories Yusei had thrown at him the other day. Surely Yusei would be expecting something like this to happen soon, so he'd have to make it extra good to make up for it.

...Now that he was even more excited to go home, he wanted to derail this meeting (which, admittedly, was not the super-hellish session he thought it would end up being) so that they could go home faster. It took a little bit of thinking, but then suddenly the idea him when he glanced at his sleeve and happened to see a little strand of fur on it.

"Oh yeah! Hey guys, Pharaoh showed up the other day, the cat's doing just fine and dandy!"

"...Excuse me?!"

Judai made sure to steal the camera out of Jun's pocket and delete all the pictures and video while Yusei distracted them with cat pictures.


	151. True Slow Dancing

_**5/31/19**_

"Yusei, before we sleep did you want to learn a little bit about the dancing stuff?" Judai asked, closing their bedroom door behind them as they finally walked in later that night. The lessons honestly hadn't gone on very long afterwards, and instead of slipping away like Judai had originally intended for them to do, they'd taken the chance to have dinner with Edo and Jun since they were over at Jun's place anyway. Asuka happened to get home right around when they'd ended, and it'd been pretty fun messing around in the kitchen and catch up even more on stuff while making dinner.

Of course, Asuka had finally gotten the chance to lecture him in person as well thanks to Edo and Jun distracting Yusei with something about their companies or whatever, so that hadn't been the greatest thing to go through even though he bore through it because it was inevitable. When she was done ranting to him, they were fine obviously, and immediately he started pushing for the story of how she and Jun had managed to get together, let alone end up _married_.

She didn't tell him, dammit, and just smirked at him while he died of curiosity.

Either way, they ended up staying late and had only just gotten home, luckily managing to avoid some late night rain that'd started to fall right after they got into the apartment - it was the kind that'd be gone by early morning, and the only way you'd know it even happened was if you'd seen it yourself or happened to see the tiny puddles left behind before they evaporated with the rise of the morning sun.

"...Sure, just a little bit though," Yusei said after thinking for a moment, "I'm pretty tired."

"Me too - don't worry, I'll just go over the positions and a little bit of the basic sway," Judai replied, pulling Yusei towards the biggest empty spot in the room, which was between the bed and the entrance to the bathroom. Already, as he turned to Yusei to start to explain, he could feel his heart beat a bit more loudly in his ears - this was far more intimate than he'd been expecting, and he was quieter as he explained, "Here, this'll be a bit easier than what I did earlier - we'll keep these hands laced together and held up, see? And then these just rest on each other's upper arm or shoulder, whichever is easier to reach."

"Like this?" Yusei asked, his own tone low and quiet in response to hearing Judai's do so.

"Yeah... And hey, good job, you already have your feet in the right place," Judai smiled, glancing up from the floor only to meet Yusei's piercing gaze.

It was the same one as that time they went on their date in the rain, and it stole his breath away just as easily as it had then; any and all previous plans he might've had to try and make this anything other than a nice, quiet moment flew out the window right then, too.

"Steps back and forth, spinning in a slow circle in place, right?" Yusei nearly whispered, moving him into a slow start when Judai managed to nod in return. He faltered a little bit at first, but it didn't break the moment at all and it certainly didn't break their gaze on each other.

Before Judai knew it, they were kissing - sweet kisses, not the ones that they often fell into nowadays because they never seemed to be able to get enough of each other. And all the while, Yusei kept them moving, Judai easily following his lead as he closed his eyes and let himself focus on the moment instead of his footsteps. Eventually they stopped, and Judai simply moved closer to rest his head against his shoulder while Yusei leaned his own head against his.

The rain outside was their music and they slowly danced for a long while afterwards to it, despite saying otherwise beforehand.


	152. Wait, Sickness?

_**6/1/19**_

It started with a little bit of scratchiness in his throat - not particularly a common occurrence for Judai, but not particularly rare, either. The morning went on, he was blessed with some of Yusei's coffee made just for him, and it was gone for a little bit thanks to the thickness of the drink.

But then it came back, and kept getting worse, and Judai knew _something_ had to be wrong when he started coughing regularly and had what was probably the worst sore throat of his life. It was alarming enough of an event that even Yusei took notice from just a few rounds of coughing.

"Are you okay?" Yusei asked him, frowning slightly and looking over at him from the desk.

"...Uh, don't think so," Judai replied hoarsely, keeping his answer short due to the pain before standing up from the couch to go grab cough drops from the medicine cabinet in the kitchen, "Throat is hurting, _badly_."

Yusei blinked at him in surprise, immediately getting up to follow him, "Did you get sick? I thought you said it was really hard for you to get sick, and you haven't done anything recently that would warrant it even for someone without your kind of resistance."

"No clue," Judai mumbled, tearing open the cough drop bag and noting happily that they were the cherry kind, "We'll have to see if any other symptoms pop up." When he looked over, he smiled widely at the sight of Yusei filling a mug with a _ton_ of honey - about triple the amount a sane person would normally put - before throwing in a tea bag and pouring hot water from the coffee maker inside for him, "Yusei I fuckin' love you."

He got a chuckle in return at his enthusiasm, Yusei giving him the mug after stirring it a bit to make sure the honey dissolved, "Love you too. Let me know if it gets worse, okay? For the record though, I hope it doesn't."

"Me too."

And then a few hours later, of course, it got worse. It had actually been building up for a while, but he hadn't taken too much note of it because it wasn't an incredibly obvious thing at first like his terrible sore throat; he was cold, and by this point, it was bad enough to label them as chills.

He didn't have a fever though - he took his temperature a couple times just to be sure, too.

"This sucks," Judai complained, popping another cough drop into his mouth like it was candy and doing his best to huddle further into the blankets and bed sheets surrounding him. Yusei had practically forced him to go back to bed once he told him he was starting to get the chills, and he was really thanking him right now for doing that because he was _cold_.

"I guess you really are sick," Yusei mused, looking at him worriedly before passing over another fresh mug of tea and honey.

Judai gave him a thankful look before immediately sipping at the hot drink in relief - it was burning hot to his tongue, but it was a small price to pay for the warmth that shot through his body when he did so. He'd take anything he could get right now.

"What I'm wondering is how he got sick," Haou stated, having popped up alongside Yubel a little bit beforehand when Judai was still downstairs and initially had his realization that the cold he was feeling was unnatural. All three of them stared at Judai while he continued to drink his tea, not wanting to talk more and irritate his throat in the process.

Yubel looked thoughtful, giving Judai a careful stare before slowly saying, "I have a possible theory. It could be a duel monster sickness - I recognize these symptoms, it's an uncommon one but not life-threatening in the slightest and tends to go away after a few days. He hasn't been exposed to them much at all, so he hasn't caught any before but... being half-human doesn't provide the same resistance to monster sicknesses as being half-monster does for human sicknesses."

"So he caught a duel monster sickness?" Yusei wondered, bringing a hand up to his chin as he pondered the idea, "It makes sense, but then where did he get it from?"

After another short period of silence, Haou was the one who finally came up with an answer, "Pharaoh."

"The damn cat?" Yubel asked, smirking slightly at the idea.

"That has to be it," Yusei agreed, his eyes lighting up in realization, "Pharaoh's been in the spirit realm for years now, right? He could easily be a carrier for it, and it just took a few days for it to latch onto Judai."

 _That goddamn cat, I swear to the gods-_ Judai thought, glaring at the inside of his mug resignedly, _I can't even be mad, it's not like there's anything that could've prevented it from happening. It's not Pharaoh's fault._

"Well, at least now we know how it happened. Just have to wait it out now," Yusei continued, turning to Yubel to ask, "Since you know what he's got, are there any other symptoms to look out for?"

"He's gonna be pretty damn loopy on days two and three," Yubel grinned, cackling slightly to herself, "I got infected with the same thing once, now that I think about it. I remember on those days that I felt really happy for some reason, pretty much like I was high or something."

"Gods, I remember that," Haou said, looking vaguely terrified at the memory which in turn _absolutely_ terrified Judai and, it would seem from the face he was making, Yusei, "You kept insisting you weren't sick anymore, yet you stayed wrapped up in sheets and were like a leech that wouldn't get off of me. You wouldn't sleep, either."

Yusei winced at the information, sighing with dread, "This is going to be a long week, isn't it?"

Well, at least Judai had the reassurance that he'd feel fine for a couple days, based off what Yubel had said. He still felt bad for Yusei though, and he gave him an apologetic look - hopefully he wouldn't prevent him from getting his work done too badly, he knew that Yusei was set to finish up entirely soon because he wanted to spend more time together.


	153. Workarounds

_**6/2/19**_

Yusei, upon talking a bit more with Haou about what he'd had to deal with when Yubel had gotten sick, had the foresight to prepare in advance; with his sudden realization that Judai would have both insane clingy-ness and be able to actually satisfy that clingy-ness thanks to his shadows, he was forced to prepare for the possibility of being unable to escape the room during the times Judai was awake. He didn't mind it at all to be honest, it just meant he had to plan around it.

And thank the stars he had, because it meant he had access to his laptop and therefore was able to work. He'd been able to slip out the next morning and get some coffee and breakfast along with a bowl of soup for Judai that he'd made the day before, but that was only because Judai was still sleeping - once he got back and just started setting things down, Judai woke up with a sleepy groan, which marked the start of a very long day.

"...Yusei?" Judai asked, his voice just ever so slightly too high-pitched and... Yusei supposed the word for it would be something akin to _cutesy_ , compared to how he normally sounded in the morning while half-asleep.

"Good morning," Yusei smiled, bringing over the bowl of food and gesturing for Judai to sit up, "Here, I got you some soup."

If Yusei hadn't already known that Judai was sick, he probably wouldn't have been able to tell because Judai's entire face lit up the same way it always did whenever Yusei gave him food in bed. It wasn't something he did very often, but every once in a while since White Day had passed he'd do so if he happened to wake up absurdly early (which in itself was the reason it didn't happen often, because he generally slept as much as he possibly could), mainly because he very much enjoyed making Judai happy like that.

He took his place back on the bed before digging into his own plate of food, trying to finish it quickly just in case Judai finished his soup and tried to do something ridiculous. He may not know exactly what _qualified_ as such, but he'd rather not even have to find out. Once he finished and put the plate back to the side, he glanced over and noted that Judai was just finishing as well, letting out a happy sigh and putting the bowl off to the side as well.

"How's your throat?" Yusei asked lightly, trying to figure out if Judai had already been hit with the 'happy high' symptom, as Yubel had dubbed it.

Judai gave him a look of confusion, replying, "My throat's fine? I feel great actually."

So in other words, he'd been hit hard, because his voice had _sounded_ sore as he talked and even made Yusei want to wince in pain just from hearing it.

"Judai, you're sick."

"What? I don't get sick though, silly."

"Then explain to me why you just wrapped all those blankets and sheets around you the second you finished your food."

"It's just cold, I'm not sick! You're funny, dear."

Yusei sighed at the dopey smile Judai was now wearing, seeing that he definitely wouldn't be able to reason with him any time soon. Luckily he'd also prepared for this, and pulled out a mug of tea that'd been mixed with honey alongside a little plastic cup filled with cough medicine - according to Yubel, it'd work just fine for the sore throat since the main goal in this case was to simply do damage control. Judai wouldn't have that natural pain filter for talking, so the point was to limit the damage he could do to himself in the meantime.

"Judai? Can you do me a favor and drink this?" Yusei asked, holding out the little cup of medicine.

Judai stared at it before glancing back up to Yusei, sounding painfully confused as he tilted his head and questioned with a small smile, "But I don't need medicine?"

"...It's not medicine. Just try it, for me?" Yusei lied, though he didn't feel bad in the slightest in this case for doing so; just to sell his point, he even threw in as innocent of a smile as he possibly could.

"Okay, just for you then!" Judai grinned, taking the cup and downing the entire thing in one go. To Yusei's relief, he didn't proceed to immediately pout at having been tricked, and instead turned to look at him happily, "Oh, you're right! It's not medicine, it's not that icky medicine flavor. Y'know, the grape one."

...So that was why Judai didn't notice. Either he simply didn't have enough experience with having to take medicine, or Judai really liked the artificial cherry flavor; Yusei so badly wanted to lean towards the former, but he was sure it was really the latter that was the reason.

On that note, Yusei immediately grabbed out one of the cherry cough drops and tossed it to Judai, stating, "Here, I got you some candy. It's hard candy, so make sure not to bite it."

Judai positively beamed at him as he opened one and popped it in his mouth, "You're the best, love."

Judai was using an awful lot of pet names compared to usual, too, which made this even more of a novel experience than it already was. Usually Judai either said his name or didn't say any kind of name at all, with pet names only tending to come up when he teased him. Things like 'gearhead' and 'dear' were the most common, and he could remember maybe one other time before this that Judai had called him 'love' like this.

It was at this point that Yusei tried to get up from the bed to bring the dishes downstairs, then had to stop because Judai was set on following him out the door, attempting to stand up while bringing all the sheets and blankets with him.

"Stay in bed," Yusei said, pausing for a moment in debate before continuing, "Please? For me? I'll give you something if you do, and I'll be back in a couple minutes." Said something was the mug of tea he had yet to give him, but Judai didn't need to know that so long as he brought it downstairs with him so he couldn't find it on his own.

"Aw, fine," Judai pouted, though Yusei saw the glint of curiosity in his eyes and knew that he'd stay put for the moment. He quickly went about dumping the dishes into the sink, not bothering to even try to clean them for now since he didn't have the time to - he didn't know if Judai would stay put for more than five minutes, after all, so he had to make the most of the time. He got himself a refill on his coffee before bringing both that and the tea back upstairs, shutting the door behind him as he entered the room.

"Got you tea," Yusei smiled, handing it over to Judai before once again getting back on the bed and starting to settle in again. He wasn't even going to try going downstairs to work at this point, and preferred to simply get straight to work here so he could make sure Judai rested.

"You working in here today?" Judai asked, the excited tone telling Yusei that he'd made the right choice to just stay.

"Yup. It's a slow day, feel free to cuddle if you want - just make sure I can still type, please."

It was the fastest Yusei had ever had Judai latch onto him, and he couldn't help but wonder if he should start working on the couch instead on normal days; Judai would probably appreciate the ability to be able to just hug him, if anything, because he'd complained before about not being able to when he worked at his desk. Just because he was sick right now, it didn't mean his happiness was fake.


	154. Cough Drops

**_6/3/19_**

There was one thing Yusei hadn't accounted for, and that was that Judai was continuing to pop cough drops down like they were actually candy - only half a bag of two were left, to his chagrin, and it was barely reaching dinner time of Day Two. So, after accepting this fact and knowing what he had to do to fix this problem, he pulled out his phone when Judai wasn't looking and took a quick picture of the cough drop bag.

 _Yusei: crow help, can you please go get more of these?_

 _Yusei: img__

 _Yusei: judai has literally eaten through our entire stock in less than two days, it might partially be my fault for telling him it was candy but i had to because otherwise he wouldnt eat them_

The reply didn't take long to get back to him, and it was about what he expected it to be.

 _Crow: wtf judai, damn he might be even worse than u when ur sick yusei_

 _Crow: gotta admit tho that they do taste pretty good_

 _Crow: guessing u need those exact ones, ill get like six of them just make sure u pay me back_

 _Crow: i finish up here in twenty minutes so ill be back in thirty with the stop_

 _Yusei: thanks_

With that he put his phone back with a sigh, knowing already that when Crow got back and tossed him those cough drops that he definitely wouldn't be leaving the room without slipping a few photos of them. A nudge to his side grabbed his attention though, and he was met with a smiling Judai clinging to his arm and looking half-ready to climb into his lap.

Well, try to climb into his lap at least. He'd probably wobble over and roll right off because of all the blankets wrapped around him, which... was pretty funny to think about. Yusei couldn't decide if he wanted to see it happen or not, because it'd definitely be cute but also involve Judai inevitably rolling all the way off the bed - a decidedly bad thing right now.

Just as Yusei was about to ask him what he was up to, Judai leaned up and muffled his question with a kiss. He blinked in surprise but went along with it, seeing as he didn't really have to worry about getting sick himself considering it was purely a duel monster sickness. He didn't close his eyes this time, instead choosing to observe his face for once while they kissed; Judai tasted strongly of cherry cough drops, which wasn't a bad thing at all, and when Yusei coaxed his mouth open after a few seconds with a wandering tongue and a hand cupping the other's face, he was met with a half-dissolved cough drop and a quiet moan from Judai when he half-managed to steal it from him.

It was mesmerizing when Judai's eyes opened partly, brown orbs slightly glazed over as he automatically tried to steal it back and only ended up making himself have to close his eyes again at the feeling of their tongues brushing deliciously. Yusei couldn't help but smirk slightly into the kiss as they fought over the cough drop, which he eventually let Judai have back after a bit before pulling back with a chuckle.

"Those do taste good," he said, brushing Judai's cheek with his thumb and noting how cold his face was despite the light flush of pink that dusted it. He got a dazed hum of agreement in return, Judai hugging his waist and curling himself into him as much as he could, most likely to try and get as much of his warmth as possible. "Want another one?" he asked, already reaching for the bag before Judai even started to nod into his side.

 _This is pretty fun. With him being sick and all I thought it would be worse,_ _though I did already prevent most of the issues by not leaving..._ Yusei thought to himself, not bothering to hold back his wide grin as Judai looked up at him and watched with wide eyes as he popped the cough drop into his own mouth before covering Judai's lips for another kiss.

They were getting more cough drops soon anyway, so they might as well use as many of what they have right now while they had the chance, right? Plus Yusei could cheat a little and just chew them away after they dissolved too much for them to have fun fighting over it, so they used up more in the process.

Yusei was just glad he had the willpower to stop just before Crow got back, because Judai certainly wasn't going to care about that at the moment, even if he would later; it was just so addicting to have Judai practically melting like putty from his kisses, gripping at him like he'd fall apart otherwise.


	155. Almost Better

_**6/4/19**_

Yusei managed to make it through most of Day Three without Judai being too much of a hassle - rewording things and bargaining with him seemed to do the trick most of the time and he found himself able to move about the house for short periods of time to do the things he needed to both days. Getting food, taking care of Pharaoh (though Crow had taken up that job for the most part and at this point was just leaving the window open for the cat so he wouldn't get bored), and just overall stretching his legs for a bit was all he really needed to do, and it was just for two days until the 'happy high' passed.

Only twice had Judai pulled out his shadows on him, and that was the first time he got up to go to the restroom and the time he accidentally woke him up while trying to leave the room. The first time had been simple to get him to let go, since the restroom was in the same room and Judai was easily appeased by that; the second time, however, involved a lot of coaxing on his part to get Judai to let go of the shadows binding his wrists and let him leave to go get food for them.

Now though, something different was happening, and Yusei wasn't too sure if he needed to worry much about it.

"...Judai?" Yusei questioned, noticing that Judai had been staring intently at him with a frown for a while without a single sound other than his breathing, which was louder than usual due to being sick.

The most important thing to note in this case was that Judai was _frowning_. He'd been nothing but smiles since the previous day, even when he was confused or didn't want to do something, so it stood out like a red flag to him.

Judai shut his laptop and put it off to the side safely in one smooth motion, barely looking away from him to do it, before Yusei felt arms wrap around his waist and pull him into his lap. His confusion was answered shortly after by Judai proceeding to drag him into the blanket cocoon and settle him in, then attempt to stand up with a hop.

"Wait, Judai-" Yusei attempted to say, before having to cut himself off and latch onto Judai's shoulders at the jerky movements he made when he successfully managed to stand up with him. The sight of shadows holding them up told him that Judai was definitely not good to be moving around right now like this.

"I haven't made anything for you, I gotta make something for you," Judai mumbled, nearly too quiet for Yusei to hear. He went to go walk out the door, a shadow easily grabbing the handle so he could actually get out the door, before being interrupted by Haou and Yubel.

"Judai no, you can do that later," Yusei stated, relieved that the two others were there and could actually help him with keeping Judai from leaving the room, "Can we go back to the bed for now? It's colder outside, I'd rather stay in the room in the bed, okay?"

"This is the transition period, he'll probably be back to normal in an hour or two," Haou concluded, pushing Judai back towards the bed alongside Yubel. Yusei assumed that had anyone else been doing it, Judai would've been pushing them away with his shadows, but he was sure that Haou was keeping him from doing so right now; it was one of the things they tested, in which whoever's not in charge of the body at the moment can use the shadows independent of the other, though with far less strength.

"It's a little like waking up from a dream," Yubel explained, tsk-ing at Judai when he halfheartedly whined about being forced to sit back down on the bed, "Okay, let go of Yusei now."

"Don't wanna."

"Let go of him, he needs to work more."

"Nu," Judai pouted, causing all three of them to sigh in response.

"Looks like it's up to you, he shouldn't try to leave again so at least you've got that goin' for you," Yubel shrugged, she and Haou disappearing a second later and leaving Yusei to find a way out of his predicament himself.

He was strongly reminded of how Judai acted after visiting the reactor a second time, mainly because of the position he was in, with Judai digging his face into his hair and hugging him close in his lap. There was a pretty distinct difference that was quickly made, though, when Yusei jolted and felt his face burn at the feeling of a hand slowly starting to rub its way up his leg.

Yusei determined right then and there that he wasn't going to let _that_ happen while Judai was still _sick_. Kisses were fine, making out was fine, but this wasn't... _only_ because Judai was sick, of course - any other time he'd be happily drowning in the feeling of his burning face while Judai teased him.

At least his decision of how to get out this was made slightly easier now, since he wasn't going to be able to focus on his work after this anyway.

"Let's take a nap," Yusei said, catching Judai's eye and doing his absolute best to look completely exhausted - something that was actually harder to pull off right now due to how much rest he'd gotten the past few days. Luckily it seemed to work though, because Judai's hand immediately stopped in favor of cupping Yusei's face to study it, a look crossing Judai's face that was mostly happy but laced with little bits of concern.

It was nice to know that even like this, Judai cared about his well-being so much.

" _...My throat- fuck it hurts-"_

It was also nice that Judai was finally back and not ridiculously happy and loopy anymore when they woke back up.


	156. Afterthoughts

_**6/5/19**_

Judai's memory was a bit foggy, but he could remember most of the previous two days well enough to make note of a few important things.

First, it was actually pretty scary to think about how... _good_ he'd felt, during that time period. He's so thankful that Yusei _exists_ and was helping him out because it terrifies him in hindsight, thinking about how vulnerable and easily manipulated he was; Yusei was there though and made sure he was taken care of and didn't wander off on accident, so that was a relief.

Second, speaking of Yusei - Judai wasn't going to ever be able to look a cough drop the same way any more. Just thinking about those mind-numbing kisses was making him feel hot and embarrassed; it was so rare for Yusei to be the one initiating those sorts of steamy make-out sessions, yet he'd turned it into something of an art form. Now he wanted him to do it again so he could remember it clearer, though Judai might have to drop a few subtle hints to get that to happen.

Finally, a third point that he'd need to explore later just in case he was wrong (he'd been half-asleep _and_ dazed at the time), but he swore that that time where he grabbed Yusei with his shadows - something he needed to apologize for, now that he thought about it - that Yusei had tugged on his bound wrists a couple times and blushed a light pink like it was something he was secretly enjoying.

That was just speculation and he could deal with that later, though. For now, he needed to focus on getting better and most of all, convincing Yusei to let him go downstairs.

And Judai thought _he_ was bad when Yusei got sick, what with hiding his laptop and occasionally preventing him from getting up - no, Yusei was being a massive worry-wart and wouldn't let him get up from the bed unless it was to go to the restroom. At least Judai had let Yusei wander around for a little bit to stretch his legs, and go downstairs to hang out for a bit and get a change of scenery.

"Yusei," Judai glared weakly, not really able to get mad at him but still having to deal with his legs, which were aching to be able to walk around and stretch. If this kept up, he'd have to use his shadows again on Yusei, which he didn't want to do at all, "I literally just want to hang out downstairs. There's no reason for me _not_ to be able to, plus staying cooped up in here is starting to feel a bit... suffocating."

Yusei fidgeted, looking away from his stare before sighing and looking back at him, "Fine, just... save your voice, don't talk so much, okay? You still sound horrible, I can't imagine how much your throat hurts when you do."

Judai smiled in victory at those words, hugging Yusei with a nod to show that he would refrain from speaking too much. Before he did that though, he still needed to apologize, so he leaned close and whispered so that he didn't have to speak very loud to be heard, "Thanks. Also, sorry about using my shadows on you, it's a little fuzzy but I remember it."

"Don't worry about it," Yusei reassured him, returning the hug and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before pulling back, "Come on, if you get up and keep your blankets wrapped around you I'll bring down extra pillows. Make sure you don't trip on the stairs going down though."

Judai caught him before he could go too far though, knowing that if he wanted that kiss, he was probably going to have to ask for it and now, before anyone else got home. Yusei gave him a confused look, which he couldn't answer right away because his face was suddenly burning at having to _ask_ for it; with how many times they'd done it before, he figured it shouldn't feel this embarrassing to ask, but there was something very... different about asking.

"C-Could you- um- I want-" Judai stuttered out before just grabbing the bag of cough drops and shoving it into Yusei's chest, giving him what he was sure was a rather pitiful, pleading look, "-please?"

Yusei blinked bewilderingly between him and the bag for a few seconds before something seemed to click, a very small smirk forming on the other's face that made Judai's face flush even more, "Oh, I see. I suppose I could... for a price."

 _No,_ Judai thought, knowing what it was going to be and already accepting the fact that he was so desperate for this that he was going to agree.

"That is?"

"Free pass, you-"

"You can have it, just- _please_ , Yusei."

"Pushy," Yusei mused, popping a cough drop in his mouth with a victorious, satisfied smirk and cupping Judai's face gently with a hand; by this point Judai's chest was pounding, that smile and gaze piercing straight through his heart while the room suddenly seemed to heat up a couple degrees.

It was _so_ worth giving up that pass, because it was even better without that sick fogginess clouding his mind.


	157. Late Night Talk

_**6/6/19**_

"So how much work did you manage to get through while I was sick?" Judai asked later, when both he and Yusei were back in bed after a day of hanging out downstairs so Judai didn't complain about feeling suffocated anymore, "I know you had said something about finishing early again, so..."

"I actually got quite a bit done," Yusei admitted, threading their fingers together before they started to cuddle together, "I'll be done a day or two before the tournament."

Judai hummed out confirmation, pecking him on the cheek with a small smile, "Good, we'll need those extra days to hammer out our strategies, which is something we haven't done yet. At least, we haven't done it with our main decks, and for this purpose."

"Yes, wouldn't want you blocking Synchros on me all of a sudden," Yusei teased, causing Judai to pout at him.

"I would _not_ put that card in there for a tag duel, you know this," Judai defended, letting go of his hands so he could stretch Yusei's cheeks instead in retaliation, "It's purely for when I'm the only one dueling, 'cause it doesn't affect me at all."

Yusei grumbled at the abuse of his cheeks, though he was smiling when he finally got Judai to stop and let go; Judai couldn't help but reach up just a bit higher and ruffle his hair, causing Yusei to laugh in response. Soon enough Judai had to pause and dodge a hand coming from the side, attempting to do the same to him but failing at the last second.

"Nice try."

"Stay still," Yusei frowned - Judai saw a spark of mischief enter his eye and immediately started to try and figure out what he was planning, "Also, you said 'was sick' earlier, like you're not still sick right now. You're definitely still sick, mister 'I need a million blankets to survive'."

"Yeah yeah, I know but-" Judai started to respond, but he was cut off by a bundle of sheets being tugged up further over them and into his face - he managed to catch a glimpse of Yusei's grinning face before his eyes got covered, and the way that he looked so damn proud of himself was making him want to mess with him even _more_ , even if only as payback.

"Stop talking so much," Yusei stated, tapping his throat lightly with a finger for emphasis, "Like I said, still sick."

"Alright, fine, though I should be better by the end of tomorrow" Judai conceded, pushing the sheets off his face with a smile, "Before I finish though, can we talk about another thing I was thinkin' about today?"

"What's up?"

"I was thinkin'... maybe we could go to a fair one of these days? It's summertime now, so there's a lot of them going on," Judai said. He'd been trying to brainstorm more date ideas and the such, and the fair was one thing that came up - granted, it would probably involve wearing a small disguise so that they weren't bothered too much, or just making sure to go to a further city so that they weren't so likely to get mobbed by people. Either way, it was an idea he had started warming up to more as he thought about playing carnival games and going on rides with Yusei.

Money wasn't a problem at all, so they were free to play as many games as they wanted.

...Also, Judai may or may not want to kiss him at the top of the Ferris wheel. Call him a hopeless romantic, but he couldn't help but want to do it, purely because he wanted to see Yusei in that position in the first place.

"Mm'kay, sounds like a plan then," Yusei agreed easily, pulling him close so that he could bury his head into his neck, "We can talk about it later though, for now, sleep."

Judai was out within thirty seconds, reveling in the safety and warmth Yusei gave him.


	158. Fears

_**6/7/19**_

Yusei had just sat down at his desk, ready to start finishing up the last of his work - he was on the homestretch at this point and estimated that he'd be done within the next few days, just as he'd predicted earlier. Everyone was still milling about, seeing as it was now the weekend so Jack didn't have work and Crow didn't have his first client until midday; they'd just finished chatting over breakfast and were now figuring out how to spend the rest of their time.

Unfortunately, this meant everyone was still downstairs, and heard very loud squeak he made when he went to move his mouse and found a spider there next to it. Judai happened to be the closest one to him, and Yusei immediately shoved himself away from the desk, keeping an eye on the still bug whilst backing up and hiding behind him.

"Yusei?" Judai asked, looking bewildered by his sudden outburst. Jack and Crow poked their heads out of the kitchen curiously, having heard the noise.

Yusei simply pointed at the desk, not trusting the _thing_ to stay put if he took his eyes off of it because that's just what they did if you didn't, stating, " _Spider._ "

Judai gaped at him in disbelief, while Crow and Jack started snickering behind him upon realizing what had happened.

"Yusei, do _not_ tell me you're actually afraid of-"

" _Get rid of it_ ," he whined, cutting him off and pushing him towards the desk while backing up further towards the couch - not far enough that he couldn't see it anymore, though. Somewhere in the back of his mind he noted that he wasn't able to back up very far as a result, and that that should be worrying him for some reason, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to care about that at the moment.

He wanted the stupid thing _gone_ , and he wanted it gone yesterday.

Judai continued to look at him in disbelief for a few moments, catching himself from tripping at the slight push that Yusei had given him before finally turning around and moving towards the desk. Then, to Yusei's utter horror, he _picked up the spider with his bare hands_.

He let out a low, high-pitched whine as his own disbelief filled him, not even able to form any words at the sight. At this point Crow and Jack were full-on laughing at him, leaning against the kitchen entrance for support, and Judai merely opened the door and shooed the menace away onto the ground before closing it again.

"There, it's gone now, see?" Judai said, turning around and pausing at the look of horror Yusei was currently giving him.

"Judai," Yusei said, inexplicably looking between the door, his mouse, Judai's face, and Judai's hands before finally managing to strangle out, " _Why_ , Judai?!"

"Why what? I got rid of-"

"Go wash your hands! Right now!"

"I- yeah, I know I got that, I was going to-"

"You _idiot!_ Who just- who just picks up- why?!"

"I think you actually broke him this time!" Crow cried, laughing uncontrollably at the scene and wiping a tear from his eye. Pharaoh popped up from behind his legs, looking curiously out at the scene before suddenly having to move to avoid getting hit as he dropped to sit on the ground instead of leaning on the wall. Jack was unashamedly filming the entire thing on his phone, his laughter having died down to quiet snickers, but the wicked smile on his face showed just how much of a kick he was getting out of this.

"All I did was get rid of it!" Judai replied as he quickly made his way to the bathroom, Yusei following him closely to make sure he did it well enough.

He had to be sure. It was bad enough he was already needing to disinfect his entire desk at this point.

"Couldn't you have done anything else?" Yusei questioned, still only managing to squeak out high-pitched, strangled words, "What kind of idiot picks up a _spider_?!"

"It was a daddy long legs, those are harmless!" Judai retorted, to Yusei's relief using a large amount of soap as if he realized he needed to in order to make Yusei happy, "Come on man, how can you survive the Satellite and then be afraid of spiders?"

"He's not afraid of spiders, he's afraid of bugs in general," Jack corrected him, stopping his recording right there and putting his phone away before continuing, "And believe it or not, this guy would completely clean up the places he stayed at when we were growing up and used some sort of half-baked spray he made to keep out bugs."

"It was not 'half-baked', I got it from a book I found in the trash pile one day and it worked very well, thank you," Yusei sniffed, pouting off to the side as everyone stared at him with varying levels of amusement. He busied himself with getting out some disinfectant wipes from the cabinet in the bathroom and going out to wipe down his set-up, everyone else following to watch him.

Judai let out a whistle behind him before saying, "Wow, you would _not_ have liked the Slifer dorms, we had cockroaches everywhere, all the time - could never get rid of them and you just had to get used to finding them around in places you didn't want them to be. Like your clothes, or your bed, and the baths."

Yusei paled at the thought, whipping around to stare at him wide-eyed in sheer horror, "What."

"Yup! Lived there for three years, I don't get bothered by bugs at all," Judai replied, an easy grin falling onto his face as if this wasn't something absolutely terrifying to imagine for Yusei.

"Wait, weren't those school dorms? Why were they so run-down?" Crow wondered. Yusei had to give him credit for being able to think past the issue of cockroaches being everywhere, because he certainly couldn't do that right now.

He was getting chills down his back just thinking about it, and he turned back to his cleaning with a cringe to try and take his mind off it.

"Eh, us Reds were the lowest ranks there, so the logic was that our accommodations sucked to go along with that. They even tried to tear it down at one point, which would've put everyone living there without a room, but luckily that ended up not getting followed through with."

"Still doesn't sound right..."

"It wasn't. I don't think it was supposed to get that bad, but with everything that ended up happening while I was there I think fixing it was something that just got pushed off for more important things," Judai admitted, "Pretty sure they did end up tearing it down in the end though. I was the only one living in it still by the end of the third year, after all, so when I left there was probably no more incentive to keep it around."

Yusei so badly wanted to comment something snarky about the bugs, but Judai sounded rather... wistful and sad about it, so he refrained from doing so and just finished up with his cleaning, tossing out the wipes with a relieved sigh.

And then out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Pharaoh laying in his special corner and was hit with a sudden realization.

"Judai, did you ever give Pharaoh anything for fleas or ticks?" Yusei asked, moving next to him so he could tug on his sleeve lightly for emphasis.

The silence in the room told him everything he needed to know, and within the next five minutes Judai had willingly let him drag him to the computer so he could help him set up a vet appointment. He was not going to let this cat, who consistently wandered around outside on his own doing who knows what, go without protection from fleas and ticks, let alone all the other shots he probably didn't have.

He didn't care if the cat was magical and had been fine thus far after so many years, he was getting those damn shots and meds. At least Judai didn't even try to fight him on the topic, instead choosing to lightly scratch at his hair to get him to calm down; Yusei un-tensed thanks to that, something he hadn't even realized he'd been doing at the time, which earned Judai a peck on the cheek.

Stars knew Yusei wasn't going to thank him any time soon for getting rid of the spider because honestly, Judai getting rid of it was more traumatizing of an event than finding the spider right next to his hand.


	159. Vision Issues

_**6/8/19**_

Yusei let out a yawn and rubbed his eyes, tearing them away from the screen to give them a slight break. Having an actual sleep schedule was making him get tired easier the later it got, and he found himself being able to actually stop working at a decent time because of it without any prompting; just in time for dessert too, it would seem, since he could smell the chocolate from the kitchen.

Judai had gone on a cooking spree all day, now that he wasn't sick anymore and could do so. They were going to have leftovers for everyone to last the entire next week, and now probably dessert for a few days as well. This was also probably Judai's way of apologizing for the bug incident from that morning as well, so Yusei would happily take whatever concoction he'd baked for him as a result.

His eyes were a bit blurry after rubbing at them, so he waited a few seconds for them to clear while he blinked them; suddenly he was reminded of that earlier thought he'd had that morning during the incident, but had shoved to the back of his head due to more... pressing matters at the time.

Curiously, he went to the opposite corner of the room and stared at the clock on the wall next to his desk... and squinted.

... _Well, that's not good_ , he thought to himself, rubbing his eyes one more time for good measure - nope, he still couldn't quite read the clock numbers. Hell, the clock itself, plus his laptop and mouse were a bit blurry around the edges, though it wasn't so bad that he couldn't make out most of their details.

It was just the edges of things that were blurry, but... he probably wouldn't be able to read signs that were really far away, based on this. Yusei found himself a little bit worried about the implications and not really wanting to accept the fact that...

That he needed glasses. _And_ contacts, since he couldn't very well wear glasses with his helmet on when he rode his motorcycle.

It was just a little bit of blurriness, right? Surely he could live with that, he had so far - completely disregarding the fact that this was a recent development of course.

"...Why are you squinting at the clock, Yusei?" Judai asked from the kitchen entrance, startling him out of his thoughts and filling him with a small sense of dread that he wouldn't be able to keep it a secret.

He knew it was for the best, but he still didn't want to accept it just yet.

"I... was testing something," Yusei said carefully, though Judai seemed to pick up on what exactly he was doing before he could even try to come up with a different answer.

"You can't read the clock, can you," Judai stated, already knowing the answer to that as a small grin lit up his face.

"I- I can, but the numbers are little blurry and... so is everything else around the edges over there," Yusei grudgingly admitted, sighing slightly before walking over to join Judai in the kitchen. Judai caught him in a hug, making him smile a bit as his mood improved significantly from the warmth of it.

"So you need glasses, huh? You're gonna be so cute in them," Judai chirped happily, smiling up at him before leaning up and giving him a small peck on the lips, "It's not the end of the world, dear."

"I know," Yusei replied, pulling him closer and kissing the top of his head before sighing once again, "I just wish I didn't have to deal with it."

"Well, from what you said it's not too bad, right? You'll survive for a little bit, don't worry too much about it," Judai said, pulling away and pushing him towards a chair before moving to get Yusei a plate of whatever he'd made for dessert, "If you want I can ask Sho what eye doctor he goes to - they're bound to be discreet and stuff, Sho used to be really big in the pro leagues after all. Better to be safe than sorry, plus it's just less of a hassle."

"I'd appreciate it, thank you," Yusei smiled, relieved by the suggestion, "Now that that's covered, though... I smell chocolate, what did you make?"

"A classic - chocolate ganache cake with raspberry glaze," Judai replied, setting a slice down in front of him with a grin, "I wanted to practice my decoration skills, how's it look?"

"Like something that'd be served at an expensive restaurant," Yusei snorted, giving him an exasperated look and gesturing to the perfectly plattered slice - the glaze was drizzled in a zig-zag both on the cake and off to the side of the plate, there were raspberries gathered in a bunch on top of it, and a little bit of powdered sugar was sprinkled on for color, "You spoil me way too much, Judai."

"I do my best," Judai replied cheekily, plopping down in the chair next to him, "Now, try it and tell me just how amazing I am."

Yusei chuckled at that, eagerly complying and taking his first bite of the cake before saying, "Delicious. Very chocolate-y, you're amazing."

"Love you too!" Judai laughed, and Yusei loved the way his entire face lit up in pure joy.

"Now, your turn to take a bite," he said, cutting off another piece with his fork and making sure to get some extra glaze on it before holding it up to Judai.

"Wha? I don't want any right now, I made that for you, y'know-"

"Just one bite, for me? Let me feed this ridiculously good cake to my boyfriend."

Yusei vaguely heard Judai mumble something about bargaining and sickness before he was rewarded with the sight of a lightly blushing Judai opening his mouth shyly to let him feed him.

 _So cute_ , Yusei thought to himself, humming happily as he gently fed him the cake.

Now that he thought about it... maybe glasses wouldn't be so bad. It might let him take in more of Judai, after all, and that was always a plus - not that it would matter too much when they were close like this, but it'd definitely help when he was taking him in from across the room, watching him do whatever thing had caught his attention for the day. And for when there was a tournament, of course.

Yes, glasses wouldn't be bad at all.


	160. Glasses

_**6/9/19**_

Through some sort of miracle, Judai had not only gotten the details for the eye doctor from Sho that night, but also managed to schedule an appointment for the next day.

Don't ask Yusei how he did it, he honestly didn't know. But soon enough he was walking out with two pairs of glasses at mid-day, with Judai following happily behind him after being allowed to choose the frame for them. One was for outdoors use, with an automatic shader based on sunlight, while the other was for when he was at home on his laptop - it had a blue light filter on it, something he hadn't even known existed, and it would apparently help minimize the strain on his eyes from staring at a screen all day.

"Can I just say that it's really cool that they can just... churn out lenses for glasses now, right on the spot?" Judai said excitedly as Yusei drove them back home, "I remember Sho used to always complain about having to wait for new glasses to come in whenever his broke, but now they have the technology to just make it! Super cool, dude!"

"I'm glad it's not like that anymore, I'm admittedly interested to see how these filters work and I wouldn't have liked to have to wait," Yusei replied, "We still have to wait for the contacts, though."

"True," Judai shrugged, tightening his grip on his waist in the process, "At least we were right about your vision not being very bad at all, so you can still ride your bike until they come in."

Yusei hummed in agreement, and they fell into a peaceful silence for the rest of the ride back home. Once they'd returned and gotten settled back in, though, they were quick to pull out the indoors pair of glasses and test them out.

"So? You can read the clock now from all the way over there, huh?" Judai grinned, standing next to the desk and under said clock while Yusei stood in the same spot as the night before when he'd been checking his sight.

"I can," Yusei smiled, taking in the sharp, defined edges of everything - the numbers on the clock, the outer edges of everything, it all was detailed and visible to him. It was such a stark contrast to what he usually saw that he could hardly believe he hadn't noticed that his vision was going bad earlier.

Now that he could, of course, he also took a moment to study Judai without the other being able to tell where exactly he was looking. The fluffy brown hair, maroon jacket, and jeans all combined together in a way he realized he hadn't been able to truly appreciate from afar before, and he smiled wider at the sight.

Upon walking over so he could sit and see how his screen would look with the blue light filter, Judai turned his chair towards him and leaned close, trapping him in-between his arms that rested on the chair arms. Neither said anything as Judai stared at him, eyes flickering over his face with an appreciative glint while Yusei slowly heated up from the proximity despite neither of them actually touching.

"...I was right, you are cute with glasses," Judai eventually said, voice slightly husky and making Yusei's heart flutter at the tone.

"I would hope I look good, you were the one who picked the frames for me for a reason," Yusei replied, though it ended up being more of a murmur due to how lowly he'd responded. He was starting to get too flustered to be able to speak normally, especially when Judai leaned his weight onto one arm so he could bring the other up to gently push his hair out of his face, fingers ghosting lightly over his cheek.

"I picked a little too well, it seems," Judai breathed, leaning down close enough that his breath lightly fogged up his glasses while taking cupping his chin and tilting his head up and to the side lightly, "You're a little too irresistible for me right now."

He ended up having to test the filter later, much later, because heated kisses and continued praises from Judai was all Yusei could really focus on at the moment.


	161. Contacts

_**6/10/19**_

"Stop laughing, damn it," Yusei grumbled, sending Judai an annoyed glare.

Of course, to his chagrin, it only made him laugh more as he clutched at the restroom's door for balance. Yusei half hoped that the thing would end up moving suddenly from Judai leaning his weight on it so much so that he'd fall and _stop laughing_.

At least it wasn't full on laughter - it was more like chuckles that went on without an end instead of lasting for only a second or two. Either way, it didn't change the fact that Judai was getting a kick out of his current misery.

"You've come face to face with yet another one of your deadly enemies," Judai snickered, completely ignoring what he'd said, "contacts."

Yusei's contacts had only taken a day to get sent to him. They came with saline and a case as well, which was fantastic and all but... Yusei couldn't put them on to save his life.

He was trying, he really was, but it was just so damn hard to keep his eye from closing and getting used to keeping it open was a struggle.

"I'd like to see you do any better," Yusei muttered back, moving his glare down to the contacts in front of him instead. Unfortunately he knew that something like this would just take a lot of practice and time to be able to do, so he'd have to struggle through this every day until he finally got the hang of it.

Judai finally quieted down, his smile softening down until it was less amused and more caring; it gave Yusei a bit of relief, feeling himself lose the bit of tension he was building up when Judai gave him a small hug.

"Come on, I'll help you with it until you can do it on your own, don't worry," Judai reassured him, gently taking the case with the contacts and pushing him back into their room, "Go lie down and make sure your head is flat against the bed so you're looking straight up - it'll be easier if you do."

"Okay," Yusei mumbled, thankful for the help and doing what he was told to do - he just wanted to be able to do it without issue, so he'd take anything he could get to make this as least-frustrating as possible.

"One at a time," Judai said, hovering over him with one contact on one hand's finger while the other hand came up to stroke his cheek lightly. Upon getting a nod from Yusei, he forced his eye open, gently and as quickly as possible putting the contact in.

Yusei still couldn't help but wince at the feeling, not used to it in the slightest.

"Blink a bunch, it'll feel better," Judai told him, moving back to the corner of his vision to fish out the other contact. To Yusei's relief the advice helped, and though he still wasn't used to it the contact wasn't making him wince anymore.

Of course, there was still one more to go through, and Judai repeated the process with just as much grace as the first one. Yusei had to keep himself from rubbing at his eyes once both of the contacts were in, and he found himself blinking a lot as he sat up to look around the room.

It was like he was wearing his glasses, just without the very obvious lens in front of his face - no blurriness or other oddities, which meant that at least nothing had gone wrong and they were indeed working as intended.

"Thanks," Yusei said, a small smile forming on his face despite how off he felt at the moment. He got a cheerful grin from Judai in response, barely catching him when the other decided to fall onto the the bed and consequently into him as well.

"Anything for you~" Judai sang, pecking him quickly on the lips before pulling himself up so the hug was more comfortable, "Anyway, wanna go for a ride now? It should be interesting to go out and see how much different it is for you."

"Definitely, just give me a few minutes though," Yusei replied, scooting back to lie on the bed and pulling Judai down to cuddle with him while continuing to blink his eyes every few seconds, "Don't want to have to blink so much while I'm riding."

"Ah, good idea," Judai agreed, eagerly curling up into him. He was just as warm as always and Yusei ended up pulling him on top of himself more because of that.

As his blinking slowed down and he got more used to it, he tried even harder to just focus on Judai, because he didn't want to have to think about how he'd have to take the contacts out again that night.


	162. Relaxing Talk

_**6/11/19**_

And... there.

With one final click Yusei let out a sigh of relief before closing his laptop, figuring that he could deal with the rest of it all later - he had everything in order for his work that he needed in a nice little .zip folder, so everything else could wait.

What mattered was that he was finally done for a bit.

He let out a long stretch, fixing his glasses after and looking at the time - it was only early afternoon, so he and Judai could have a nice evening doing... well, whatever they decided to do. They still needed to go over their decks and strategies, but he doubted they'd start on that today.

"Yusei?" Judai questioned, finally taking notice of his movements and looking up from where he was sketching something in a sketchbook, "Taking a break again?"

"Nope," he replied, smiling happily as he came over and sat down next to him on the couch, wrapping his arms around him and explaining, "I finished everything."

Judai blinked for a moment before lighting up in realization, a silly grin taking up his face as he put his pencil and book down so he could hug him back, "You did? Yes! I've got you all to myself again, yay!"

Yusei chuckled at his enthusiasm, kissing his forehead and cheek, "Yes, you do. No more evil laptop stealing all of my time for now."

Judai nodded sagely at this, causing both of them to laugh after.

"Here," Judai said once they'd calmed down, reaching up to cup Yusei's face with both his hands, "Can I see these real quick?"

"My glasses? Sure," Yusei replied, glad that he only warmed up a little bit when Judai gently took his glasses off his face and ended up ghosting his fingers over his face yet again - the light touch was something that always ended up throwing him off guard, no matter how hard he tried.

To his amusement, Judai was quick to turn them around and put them on instead, the frames a bit too big on him to settle correctly; he blinked for a few moments, managing to look around the room and then straight at Yusei without seeming to have too much strain on his eyes.

"Huh, it's not actually that bad," Judai mused, tilting his head while holding onto the glasses with one hand so that they didn't skew with the movement - it was awfully cute and Yusei could see the reason now for Judai's inability to stay away from him the other day, if he'd felt anything like he was right now, "In fact... it hardly does anything for me."

"Well, your vision isn't the one that's bad, plus mine isn't even too off in the first place," Yusei pointed out, half tempted to do what Judai'd done a few days before and just pull him into a long kiss, though he refrained.

He'd have time for that later, he knew. For now he wanted to actually be able to hang out with his boyfriend and just... talk, and do casual activities together to relax. Sure, they talked a lot and he took a lot of breaks normally now, but it just wasn't the same as having the equivalent of a few vacation days available to him.

"If you wanna see how the filter works, just pull out your phone and look at it both with and without the glasses on."

"Oh! That's right - I wanted to see what that was all about. I kind-of zoned a bit on the explanation of how it worked, to be honest."

"That's alright, I can explain it to you if you'd like."

"Could you? I'll probably remember it better if you do, 'cause I've got a visual example right here- speaking of which, whoa, that's different."

"The main difference is the strain on the eyes, first of all. You notice a difference there?"

And so they talked and laughed for the rest of the day about whatever came to mind, whether it be more about how things worked, Judai's growing collection of sketches, or looking up the most random stuff they could think of on the internet. In other words, a perfect, relaxing day for Yusei.


	163. Summer Heat

_**6/12/19**_

"Oh my gods, I'm _dying_ ," Judai nearly cried, flopping on the couch and lazily dragging the fan over from the corner of the room with a shadow, "Wasn't it literally raining like, a week and a half ago? Stupid weather."

"It's not too bad," Yusei replied across from him, looking as unperturbed as ever - as if it wasn't _insanely hot_ at the moment, even with all the windows wide open and multiple fans set to the highest settings.

Judai _knew_ he was feeling the heat, too. The sweat starting to drip down his arm was evidence of that.

Speaking of which, Yusei was looking positively divine to him right now. Judai had never thought himself to be the type, but he was drinking in the sight of those lean-muscled, strong-looking arms and Yusei like he was his only water in the middle of the desert.

It felt like that, at least - it was still blazing hot and that uncomfortable heat was the only reason he wasn't all over his ridiculously sexy boyfriend at the moment. He was half-convinced his brain was starting to fry too, from the thoughts he was having.

"How in the world are you able to think right now, let alone sort through our decks and strategize?" Judai asked in slight amazement, openly staring at the other and not caring in the slightest about the raised eyebrow he got in response.

"...Are you okay?" Yusei asked in return, setting down the cards in his hand to look at him carefully, "Do you need an ice pack or something?"

"That sounds fuckin' amazing, yeah."

"Alright, be right back then."

 _An absolute angel_ , Judai thought watching him leave before turning his head back towards the fan with a sigh. The blasting air helped his face cool down a lot, but it wasn't doing much in the end for the rest of his body.

" _If I recall correctly, this is why you never stayed in the desert longer than you needed to,_ " Yubel mused to him, very amused by his misery at the moment.

 _You two are just lucky you have the option of not feeling how awful this heat is,_ he retorted, glaring into the middle of the fan blades with a slight pout.

Yusei returned then bearing a wrapped bag of ice along with a glass of water, and Judai nearly wanted to cry again in relief as he took both of them and sat up slightly so he could drink.

"Thank you _so much_ ," he said, quickly putting the ice pack on his head for now and moving the fan so that it was hitting his body instead of his face. As he drank the water, Yusei smiled a little and pat his head through the bag of ice; to Judai's amusement, he noted that his eyes lit up slightly when he did so, his hand pressing a bit harder as if to soak up the nice, cool feeling it had.

Not so amusing though was when Yusei went straight back to sorting through their decks without having done anything to help save himself from the heat, even just a little bit. Had he even drank anything today other than coffee at breakfast? Judai was pretty sure he hadn't, and that wasn't a good thing with this weather.

"You gearhead, go get yourself some water. You haven't drank anything since breakfast," Judai reminded him, feeling a little exasperated but more worried than anything else. He'd seen and heard from other people about heat exhaustion and he wasn't about to let Yusei accidentally do that to himself.

Yusei paused, blinking at him at the sudden revelation, "Oh, you're right. I haven't, have I? Thanks for the reminder."

"No problem, just hurry and go drink some or you're going to get dehydrated from all that sweating you're doing."

"You're sweating more than me."

Judai just groaned and waved him off, causing Yusei to chuckle at him before he went off to go grab a couple glasses of water. Damn it, they both needed to get shorts of some type - all they had were pants and they were restrictive and terrible in this weather.

He buried his face into the bag of ice once his thoughts wandered off to Yusei in short-shorts, desperately hoping that the biting chill of the ice would help him keep his thoughts in order and not on things that would only make him feel hotter.


	164. Ice Cream

_**6/13/19**_

An hour later, Judai was just about done with the heat. It'd become a little more bearable since he'd started consistently guzzling down ice water to deal with it, but one could only drink so much water at a time before they simply couldn't drink anymore.

"Yusei, please tell me we have ice cream," Judai groaned, setting down the cards in his hand - he'd managed to straighten his mind out after burying his head into the ice pack for a bit, the biting cold knocking him out of whatever heat haze he'd been in. Though, to be fair, that was probably around the same time the water he'd drank started kicking in, so he probably _had_ been going through the beginnings of heat exhaustion and just hadn't realized it.

"We've got cookie dough, I'm pretty sure," Yusei replied, smiling at his antics as Judai nearly jumped off the couch in joy.

"Yes! Come on, ice cream time," Judai cheered, barely managing to wait for Yusei to stand up before grabbing onto one of his arms - which, by the way, were still looking positively divine to him - and dragging him to the kitchen, "You get the bowls, I get the ice cream."

Yusei hummed, and a few minutes later they both had a decently sized bowl of ice cream in their hands and were sitting on the kitchen counter in front of the open window, enjoying the slight breeze that was blowing at the moment. Pharaoh happened to come in from his daily excursion at that point, too, and ended up laying on the window sill while staring at them with a begging look on his face.

"No ice cream for you, mister," Judai stated, staring right back with an exasperated look when the cat turned to look at Yusei instead.

Too bad for Pharaoh, because Yusei wasn't going to budge either, saying, "Ice cream is still a milk product, that's not good for you. Sorry."

Pharaoh meowed for a bit in response before seemingly accepting that he wouldn't be getting anything, jumping off the sill and ultimately onto the floor so that he could go settle down into this corner. For a moment Judai worried about him getting too hot with his coat, but then he realized that this same cat had survived a desert climate for multiple months without issue, so he merely dragged the mini fan that was on the desk over to sit next to the cat's bed with a shadow.

The cat would be fine without it, yeah, but it was only courteous; Judai didn't want to subject anyone else to the ridiculous heat either if he could prevent it, cat or not.

"You think it'll be cooler if we go to our little spot looking out at the bridge?" Judai mused, looking back out the window after shoving another bite of ice cream in his mouth and enjoying the cool creaminess of it.

"Probably, it's right next to water after all," Yusei replied, tilting his head towards him, "Did you want to go? Riding the bike there might be nice too 'cause of all the air rushing by. We can just bring our decks and work on it more there."

"Yeah, but we'll still have to wear our jackets for the ride over there for the extra protection," he muttered, debating on it in his head. Did he really want to have to put on a jacket in this weather? Not really, no, but going to a cooler spot that would also be shady due to all the trees surrounding it sounded wonderful.

"Well, we don't _have_ to."

Judai blinked at him in shock, hardly believing that _Yusei_ was the one who had just said such a thing, "Since when have you not cared about safety?"

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him, a little smirk quirking up on his lips that made Judai's mind go blank for a split second as he replied, "I know I haven't really gotten much of a chance to prove it to you, but I'm far more of a dare-devil than you think. Comes with growing up in a place like Satellite, I've done some crazy stunts in my life - I just happen to be a bit more cautious now that I can be."

Judai found himself unable to answer beyond giving him a wide-eyed stare, his face heating up as he took in this side of Yusei that he'd really only gotten glimpses of before whenever they teased each other.

Yusei chuckled at him, and before Judai knew it he was holding onto Yusei tightly and enjoying the cold air battering at their bare arms as Yusei drove them towards their spot by the bridge.

...On second thought, maybe the heat _had_ gotten to Yusei too, and it was just the catalyst needed to bring out this side of him. And if they happened to be a bit more touchy than they usually were while sitting at their bench and strategizing, Judai blamed it on the weather as well.


	165. Movie Night

_**6/14/19**_

"You still awake?" Judai mumbled, not bothering to move his arms off his face as he turned towards Yusei. They both were lying on top of the bed sheets due to the humidity of the night, and Judai at least couldn't manage to sleep because of it.

Usually he could ignore it and just pass out, but something about that specific night, the weather, and the surrounding atmosphere made falling asleep an impossible feat.

"Yeah," Yusei replied shortly, rustling the bed sheets as he turned to look at him and moved one of his arms off his face so he could see it.

"Damn it. Of all the nights, it had to be the one right before a tournament, huh?" Judai mused, eyeing Yusei's hand for a moment before holding it with a little sigh and a smile. He got a small grin in return for his actions, which brightened his mood significantly.

"Well, at least it's one we're doing for fun," Yusei pointed out, squeezing his hand back for a moment, "Plus we could win duels in our sleep, pretty much. We mainly need the energy for dealing with all the people and attention there."

Judai hummed quietly in agreement, letting the silence hang in the air for a bit as he thought about what they could do; there wasn't much he could think of besides doing their best to ignore the mugginess of the night, but eventually something came to mind that he liked the idea of.

"Wanna go downstairs and like... watch a movie on your laptop or something?" Judai asked, getting a curious blink of thoughtfulness from the other.

"It would be cooler downstairs, heat rises," Yusei mumbled, mulling it over in his head in such a way that Judai could once again easily imagine it being filled with gears, "Alright, but you need to set it up. I've only watched like, two movies in my life and that was because of the twins' convincing."

 _Makes sense_ , Judai thought to himself, biting his tongue from saying anything about it - besides, Yusei would already know at this point what he was thinking. Knowing him, he could probably just see the protectiveness in his eyes.

This was why Judai was here though, to help him get figure out all these experiences that he never got to have before. He could never be sad for him for too long because Yusei's intent interest and curiosity with everything always left him beaming in joy at how adorable it was.

They brought down a few pillows with them so they had extra padding on the couch, along with a blanket just in case because it could be used as a softer spread if they needed it. As they were setting it up though, one of the doors upstairs creaked open, followed quickly by another.

"Guessing you guys couldn't sleep either, huh?" Crow laughed quietly, leaning on the railing next to Jack and looking down at what they were doing.

"Nope! We're gonna watch a movie to pass the time, wanna join? We can just make this a huge-ass pillow fort or something - as long as the laptop's visible and everyone's comfortable that's all that matters," Judai grinned, holding up a pillow and shaking it playfully.

"If there's going to be four of us watching, we might as well put it on the holo-pad. That thing can expand its screen really big, we just need a mount to hold it up in the air," Crow mentioned, trotting down the stairs immediately at the invitation with a quiet Jack following behind him.

Jack looked slightly irritated, as would be expected from a guy who probably treasured his beauty sleep, but evidently wasn't as much as he seemed judging from how he went to the kitchen and grunted, "I'll get tea for everyone. Choose a boring one, maybe we can all fall asleep if you do."

All three of them snorted at that one, knowing that if they were going to fall asleep, it'd happen whether the movie was boring or the most interesting thing they'd ever seen in their lives.

"Give me a couple minutes, I'll put a mount together real quick," Yusei said, clearly already knowing what he needed to as he dug through a couple boxes of parts along the wall and started pulling out specific ones with ease.

"Alright, guess it's up to us to figure this out," Judai shrugged, studying the couch and the area around it while deciding what to do.

"You and Yusei stick to the couch, Jack and I will set up on the ground," Crow grinned, eyes glinting as he teased, "Last thing we need is to have our teeth rot and get cavities thanks to you two, so you get to stay behind us and out of sight."

Judai rolled his eyes, waving him off while walking back up the stairs, "Yeah yeah, whatever you say. Move the coffee table while I go get a ton of blankets and pillows for you, even though I shouldn't be after comments like that."

"You should see the posts I get on my news feed about you two-"

"On second thought, your comment is very tame and I appreciate you not being worse about it."

"Oh man, just think about what it'll be like after tomorrow- or rather, later today, it's past midnight..."

"Don't remind me," Yusei pitched in from across the room, loud enough that even Jack could hear him over the boiling water in the kitchen.

They all laughed at his comment, and then subsequently laughed again when Judai threw a pillow at Crow's face just as Jack walked back into the room with drinks. Soon enough everything was set up and a random fantasy movie of some sort that Judai had scrolled through and found was playing on a decently sized screen that was mounted on the far-away coffee table.

Judai was happily cuddled up with Yusei, fans blowing and actually being able to reduce the room's temperature to a comfortable amount thanks to it being cooler than the upstairs already.

Of course he managed to fall asleep, this was basically heaven after the day he'd had. The quiet movie sounds and the sounds of the fans blowing all trickled into white noise as he closed his eyes and slept on Yusei's shoulder.


	166. Giving Advice

_**6/15/19**_

Judai yawned and rubbed at his eyes when late morning finally hit, having one of those rare moments where he actually managed to wake up fully and immediately instead of becoming coherent over time. He smiled down at Yusei, who'd slumped down with him on the couch evidently before going to sleep, and noted that while Crow was still snoring away on the ground on a veritable mountain of pillows, Jack was missing.

The clanks in the kitchen told him that he was making his usual coffee, though, so he reluctantly untangled himself from Yusei while being careful not to accidentally wake him up. Another round of yawns hit him as he walked into the kitchen, which earned him a huff as a greeting from Jack.

"Mornin'," Judai mumbled, his greeting slightly distorted thanks to the yawn, "You just get up?"

"Yup," Jack replied shortly, impatiently tapping his foot and waiting for the coffee machine to finish brewing so he could get his morning cup.

Judai got to work starting on a simple, but filling breakfast to fill them up for the tournament today. As he did so, he had the sudden thought that this was a rare moment where he was actually alone with Jack, which reminded him that he _had_ threatened to 'talk' to him about Carly all those days ago during the last tournament.

It was just to tease him originally, but recently Carly had been getting a little bummed out about it. Considering Jack was keeping a job and had his shit partly together now, she complained that he hadn't shown even a little sign of asking her, and Judai had assured her that she hadn't imagined him liking her when she fretted about it over text. Maybe teasing him a bit about it now would be the push Jack needed to finally ask her out, because Judai had _seen_ the look he gave her.

That man was totally head over heels for her, and he was straight-up lying if he tried to say otherwise. Besides, Judai would never pass up possible blackmail material for later.

"So Jack," he stated, getting an immediately wary stare from the other upon hearing his lighthearted tone, "Don't think I forgot about talking to you about how utterly head over heels you are for a certain swirly-glasses."

"Shut up," Jack grumbled.

"So you don't deny it?"

"I said shut up, damn it."

"Out of curiosity, why _haven't_ you asked her out yet?" Judai pushed, patiently waiting for Jack to stop glaring at him and answer.

It took a minute or two of silence, but eventually Jack uncrossed his arms and replied, "It's complicated."

"I'm sure if you talked to her about it, she'd understand," Judai countered, shrugging as Jack looked at him incredulously, "What? I'm not going to ask you to explain beyond that, I'm just saying that you should talk to her about it. I was half convinced you two were already together when I talked to you guys before, so I can tell she cares about you."

"I... know she does, like I said, it's complicated," Jack muttered, finally being able to pour a cup of coffee now that it was done and swirling the liquid around before sipping at it. Judai could tell that it improved his mood significantly, considering he continued on to say, "Also, when you put it like that you make it sound like we're all over each other or something, we're _not_. At least, we're not nearly as bad as you and Yusei were - Crow and I could barely believe our fucking eyes, you two were literally attached at the hip from the first moment you came here."

"Yeah yeah, I got it. You guys have lorded that over us for months," Judai pouted, pulling down a few plates before he turned on the stove and started cooking the pancake batter he'd quickly whipped up, "That's besides the point, though. I'm telling you to go talk to her instead of bottling it up, because bottling it up does nothing good in the end."

"Speaking from experience, I assume," Jack stated, finally conceding with a sigh, "Fine, whatever. We'll see."

Judai hummed in success, sprinkling some berries into the currently cooking pancake - this one would be Jack's, as the other had told him a couple months beforehand how he liked them. He figured the least he could do for bugging him like this was shove a plate of good food in front of him.

"Y'know, you put on that tough front but you're really just a big softie, aren't you?" Judai teased, earning himself a middle finger for his trouble which only made him snicker, "Aw, you just know it's true. At least it's the weekend so you can come to the tournament, Carly will be there!~"

"God, you are insufferable."

"Just wait, you can help me tease the shit out of Crow once we finally figure out who he likes. I _know_ there's someone and I'm ninety percent sure Yusei knows something about it, but I haven't been able to get it out of him yet because he quotes it as being 'too good of blackmail material' to give up yet."

The gleam in Jack's eyes matched his own at that moment, and they shared a mutual nod agreement. Crow had been a lot more active about teasing literally everyone and anyone, especially when it came to relationships, so getting revenge on him one day for it all was something they both greatly looked forward to and would definitely work together on.


	167. Dreading Interviews

_**6/16/19**_

"Why can no one ever tell us these things beforehand?" Judai complained, burying his head into Yusei's shoulder in an empty waiting room after latching onto him for comfort, "Would it be so hard to just say a few days in advance, 'Oh yeah! Please come up with something to say before the tournament starts! You'll be interviewed too!'"

"That would make life too easy, I guess," Yusei mused, gently patting his head and wrapping an arm around him to guide him to sit on the couch, "I'll try to do most of the talking if you want."

"I'm not gonna leave you to fend for yourself," Judai muttered, hitting him lightly on the back for emphasis, "Besides, we can just look out for each other and butt in if one of us hesitates on something."

Yusei hummed in agreement, pulling him away slightly and brushing away the hair from his face with a smile before kissing him softly. Judai couldn't help but smile back into the kiss, feeling the amount of care and sweetness in it and giving back as much as he could in return.

"We'll be fine," Yusei said quietly, keeping his hand on Judai's face afterwards and gently rubbing a thumb over his cheek, "Now that I think about it though, we've never had to do one of these together before, have we?"

"Always been by ourselves before for these, yeah," Judai confirmed, closing his eyes and leaning into the other's hand - it felt nice and soothing, which was exactly what he needed at the moment. He was reminded too much of the last tournament, where he'd not only not known he'd be interviewed at the beginning (which, to be fair, was legitimately something he should've realized from the start in that case), but had the info about Jun and Edo sponsoring him thrown at him, completely out of the blue.

He found himself slowly starting to dread interviews more with every single one that he had to go through; it made him appreciate the fact that Carly was a friend even more, because reporters were a scary bunch that were almost all out to tear information out of you and sometimes for less-than-glamorous reasons. At least, that's what it felt like - he was sure that quite a few were actually fine and just doing what their job required of them, but the idea was slightly terrifying anyway.

"Well then, that just means it'll be easier to get through," Yusei stated, giving him another peck on the lips, "Being together makes this sound infinitely less dreadful."

"You're right," Judai smiled, opening his eyes and bringing his own hands up to play with Yusei's face now that he was feeling better. He got an exasperated look in return, but the other didn't do anything to stop him, so he figured he could move on from the subject and onto something far more interesting to him.

"I still think you should've switched to your glasses."

"And have to put in the contacts again in order to drive back?"

"Well, that's why you have me here, right? Besides, you were the one going on yesterday about what a 'dare-devil' you were, you could just drive without them on."

Judai watched with intent interest as some switch seemed to flip in Yusei's head, a slow, small smirk forming on his face after a few moments as he leaned down close and tugged Judai's hands away from his face to hold them tight in his own, effectively preventing him from moving away at all.

"Is that a challenge?" Yusei asked lowly, pressing their foreheads together lightly and staring straight into his eyes, "Throwing my own words back at me like that, it's like you want me to prove it to you. Do you?"

Judai swallowed thickly at the proximity, licking his lips as his mouth suddenly felt dry and his cheeks started to warm up - the idea was far more appealing than it had any right to be, in his opinion.

"Maybe," he breathed quietly, flushing more at the chuckle Yusei gave in return.

"Later then, don't worry," Yusei grinned, letting go of his hands and pulling him back into a hug, returning to threading his fingers through his hair as if he _hadn't_ just been practically seducing him, "Can't have you too distracted right now, after all. We have a tournament to win and interviews to bear through together."

 _It was a little late for that_ , Judai thought to himself, feeling vaguely like he'd gotten whiplash - at least it was the good kind, though. If anything, it made him more excited to get through the day and duel well because he had something interesting to look forward to in the near future.


	168. Going On-Stage

_**6/17/19**_

"Judai, stop biting your lip," Yusei said quietly, nudging him lightly with his side.

Yubel started cackling at the irony in his head; Judai grumbled at her internally, but he did stop biting his lip while making extra sure not to start biting his tongue so that she didn't have anymore fodder for her amusement.

"Thanks," Judai mumbled, using all of his willpower to _not_ bite his tongue, his fingers twitching at his side instead, "Told you, these things get me nervous even though it's nowhere near as bad as I make myself believe."

"You do that with a lot of things, not just this," Yusei pointed out, smiling calmly and threading their fingers together, "Usually you pace when you do it though."

Judai gripped his hand back tightly, focusing on the feel of the warm leather and taking a deep breath - Yusei's calm aura helped him as usual to keep his thoughts in order as he latched onto it.

"Can we just hold hands through the whole thing?" Judai asked, feeling slightly embarrassed at the thought of walking out there like that in the middle of a large crowd before remembering that they'd gone out in public plenty of times before and held hands. It was hardly any different from that - pictures would be taken (something that'd already been done numerous times) and they would clearly be a couple (which was something that everyone already knew).

"Of course," Yusei replied, bringing their hands up so he could press a quick kiss to the back of Judai's hand.

Judai couldn't help the silly grin that popped up at this, feeling some of the nervousness dissipate in favor of affection for the other, "What a gentleman you are."

"I would hope so after all the lessons Martha put me through growing up," Yusei muttered back, sharing a look with him before they both started laughing.

"I remember her mentioning something about that when we visited," Judai snickered, "Also that you were the only one to retain them in the end. I'm a very lucky man, I see."

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him in response, pausing in thought for a moment before teasing, "Pretty sure I'm the lucky one here... mister housewife."

" _Oi_ ," Judai huffed indignantly, giving him a slight glare but laughing all the same. It _was_ pretty funny in hindsight, plus Judai had already gotten his revenge on him for that in the first place - still, he wished that it wasn't so stupidly _fitting_ for him, even if he was a lot more than just that.

"Sorry, couldn't help that one," Yusei grinned, going to say something else before being cut off by the sound of them being called up to the stage, "Time to go. Ready?"

"Ready as I can be," Judai sighed, though his smile came back quickly once he felt Yusei grip his hand tightly in reassurance, "Well, guess we can smile and wave with our free hands. Think we should ask Crow after for feedback? He's the one that actually has social media stuff."

Yusei rolled his eyes at him, opting to just tug him through the door and out onto the stage - it wasn't quite as big as the Kaiba Dome's, but it was still pretty big and the seats were packed, partly due to the great publicity the tournament got for having Yusei participating in it. He didn't wave to the loudly cheering crowd, instead smiling a small smile, so Judai made up for it by smiling brightly and waving peace signs at the stands.

It was just like last time, in that Judai's worries were unfounded once again because it wasn't nearly as nerve-wracking now that it was actually happening. In fact, he felt even better, maybe even _excited_ because he had Yusei by his side and holding his hand, which gave him a good feeling about the rest of the day.


	169. Reception

_**6/18/19**_

"I believe this is probably the single best idea you two have had yet," Edo hummed, catching them during one of the long waits between matches with Jun following right behind him.

"Why's that?" Judai asked, looking up from the basket of fries he'd been sharing with Yusei. Sure, they weren't the best thing ever, but they were hungry and something about events like this always made it seem better than it actually was.

"Have you two even looked at your phones?" Jun tsk'd back, holding up the holo-pad he had with him and pointing at the screen, "People are going wild over you guys. I, personally, don't get it but you're bringing a massive amount of attention to our business as a result, so thanks for that."

 _The Champion Couple! Tag-Duel Tournament of the Year - Exclusive Interviews with their Opponents!_ The screen read, going on to a picture of them walking onto the stage hand-in-hand. Judai had to give credit where it was due because that was actually a really good photo of them - it was just the right angle to catch Yusei's smile while also showing off his peace sign to the crowd.

"Think you could get that picture for us?" Judai grinned, pointing at it on the screen and getting an exasperated sigh from Edo.

"Of course that's what you focus on," he chuckled, "Sure, I don't see why not. It should be easy enough to contact the guy who took it and get the high-quality version of it."

"Sweet, thanks!" Judai replied, popping another fry into his mouth.

Yusei smiled at the scene, turning to the two to greet them, "Hey. Excuse him, I don't think he shoved enough pancakes into his stomach this morning."

Judai narrowed his eyes at him and pouted, but he knew it was ruined by the fries currently in his mouth and hand.

"He wouldn't be him if he wasn't hungry," Jun snorted, dragging a chair over to them, "Did you know he once, in the middle of a very important duel, stopped it so he could eat?"

"Oh, this should be good - even I haven't heard this one," Edo laughed, pulling up a chair as well, "Was it first year, then?"

To be honest, Judai couldn't exactly pinpoint which duel he was talking about - he'd eaten in the middle of plenty of duels, though in an important one? Then again, his definition of 'important' had been _heavily_ skewed since those many years ago, so he probably knew it but it just was overshadowed by a lot of other things.

"For the Graduation Model Duel in our first year, the Kaiser chose Judai as his opponent and then proceeded to let him eat an ungodly amount of rice balls in the middle of it," Jun explained, smirking at the memory, "The reason? Because he wanted Judai to stop trying to think and instead duel with his gut. Then they tied with an attack of epic proportions."

"Oh! That's the one you're talking about," Judai realized, smiling at the reminder, "Yeah, I was trying too hard to predict him, and then I was super hungry! Luckily Ms. Tome was there and whipped me up a bunch of food on the spot and I started dueling normally again - that was a fun duel."

"So what you're trying to tell me... is that you dueled better when you stopped thinking," Edo stated, looking like he wanted to judge him so badly but then silently accepting the ridiculousness of it.

"That was first year, to be fair - I'm way better than I was back then," Judai defended, frowning and nibbling on the next fry he picked up. He'd matured a lot since that time - he'd been _forced_ to mature since that time; he liked to think that he thought through things more, at least, and wasn't as impulsive as he used to be.

"We did just spend hours going over strategies together yesterday," Yusei chipped in, kicking him lightly under the table and smiling at him in reassurance.

"Still is a fuckin' hilarious story," Jun said, and that was something none of them could deny.

"Either way, about what you said earlier - I'm glad people are so excited about us. You should've heard our opponents so far, one of them said that they were just excited to get to talk to us, another was incredibly happy about losing to Stardust Dragon, and then the last pair squealed when I brought out Neos Knight using Junk Gardna," Judai stated, Yusei nodding along with him in agreement.

They'd come here to have fun, and having fun they were - it especially helped that everyone they'd been pitted against so far was a good sport and there for fun as well, so there were good times being had all around.

"Make sure you give us something flashy in the finals though, all your combos so far have been pretty basic considering it's you two we're talking about," Edo pointed out, "Show us what those supposed hours of strategizing led to."

"Don't worry, we've got plenty of tricks up our sleeve," Yusei said, sharing a look with Judai, "We haven't switched with anything in our side deck yet."

" _Ah, so he does want to do that combo after all_ ," Yubel cackled happily in his head, " _Good, very good. Definitely do that one in the finals!_ "

Judai hummed in agreement, nodding at Yusei with a mischievous grin while the other two rolled their eyes at their antics.

They'd show off, alright - Judai was so making them find videos of it afterwards, because he already knew it was going to be quite the spectacle.


	170. Tag Tournament Final

_**6/19/19**_

Their finals opponents were a young couple who looked to be the same age as Akiza; they greeted them with a very excited wave, the girl of the pair being far more enthusiastic than the shyer looking boy who just smiled at them.

"I'm so glad we get to duel you guys!" The girl exclaimed, nudging the boy next to her as she continued, "We've got a lot to thank you two for, don't we, dear?"

"Ah... yeah, we do," the boy said, rubbing the pack of his head with his free hand with a sheepish grin. Some of his hair shifted away from the side of his face when he did so, revealing a tiny little yellow marker on his cheek to the two.

 _Ah, that's why_ , Judai thought to himself, quickly managing to put the pieces together as he glanced at Yusei, _This guy must be from Satellite and gotten caught while trying to survive out there._

He'd already known that he and Yusei were a power couple on a lot of fronts for social issues, mainly thanks to their friends telling them this over and over again, but he'd never really _understood_ until this moment. The couple in front of them was probably a prime example of their influence, since they were plenty open about their relationship despite one of them having a criminal marker and being from Satellite (which, nine times out of ten, meant that the marker was completely unjustified, of course) - Judai had a feeling that had he and Yusei _not_ blown up in popularity and helped ease the tensions between people from Satellite and the city a bit, they wouldn't even be dueling together at the moment, let alone out and about like this.

It was a depressing thing to realize, but Judai was just glad that he and Yusei were doing some good in the world merely by existing.

Yusei seemed to study the boy for a moment, narrowing his eyes in thought before they lit up at a memory, "Oh, I think I remember you - it was a few years ago, but I let you stay one night when you got caught in the middle of a turf war, right?"

The boy perked up immediately, his shy smile turning less-so as he stared at Yusei in amazement, "Yeah, that was me! You really saved me back then, I can't believe you remember! I really can't thank you enough for that."

"Well, you can start by giving us a fun duel!" Judai grinned, holding up his duel disk with a wink, "That's all the thanks either of us would ever want, right Yusei?"

"Agreed," Yusei smiled, nodding and holding up his own duel disk, "Give us your best shot."

"Will do!" The other two exclaimed, holding up their duel disks as well, "Let's duel!"

* * *

They'd clearly been practicing on their tag duel skills, because the other two were really good at synergizing their cards to get some big monsters out on the field. Yusei'd been pulling out all the trap cards he could, thankfully, which led to nearly every single attack being negated somehow, either through Scrap-Iron Scarecrow or defenders like Sonic Chick who wouldn't be destroyed thanks to their opponent only having massive attack point monsters.

Too bad for them though, because Yusei had just brought out Stardust and Judai was ready to pull off a ridiculous combo thanks to it - he had all the right cards in hand and on the field, and their opponents' big monsters were going to work against them this duel.

"I have to give you guys props, you've got game!" Judai said, drawing his card and glancing at it, "But Yusei and I have a couple tricks up our sleeves! I'm gonna start off by activating Yusei's facedown, Limit Reverse, to bring back Yubel from my Graveyard!"

"Ah, so we _are_ doing this one!" Yubel laughed, looking over at Stardust with a wicked grin, "Hey, don't think we've met - you better not hold back your punches."

Stardust huffed slightly at the implication, glancing over at her for only a moment in acknowledgment before ignoring her. Both Judai and Yusei shared a glance, chuckling at the interaction before Judai continued his turn.

"Next I'll switch Yubel to face-down defense position by activating Book of Moon, which thanks to Limit Reverse, destroys her! And because she was destroyed, I can special summon Yubel - The Terror Incarnate from my deck to the field!"

Just like last time, she roared as she appeared on their field in her dragon form, though this time she'd get to stay as this version of herself for a bit longer.

"I can already see where this is going," the girl winced across from them, though the grin stayed anyway.

"Now, since I've still got my normal summon for the turn, I'll summon Elemental HERO Stratos from my hand, then activate his effect which allows me to destroy traps and spells on the field equal to the amount of Elemental HERO's I control at the moment, which is just him - that's enough to clear your one set card, though, so I'm destroying it!"

" _What is it with everyone using that card?_ " Haou complained to him, seeing that it was Solemn Judgement once again. They'd been seeing a lot of those recently, and they could be really annoying if you didn't catch them in time - at least in this case, they weren't going to activate it in response because of Stardust being on the field, which would be a good play on that part except for the fact that this next part required Stardust Dragon's ability to work so getting rid of it now would've been the best idea for them.

It was good for Judai though, and he was going to take full advantage of it, "I set one card face-down. Now, since it's the End Phase, Yubel - Terror Incarnate's effect activates to destroy all monsters on the field, but I negate it and destroy Yubel using Stardust Dragon's ability. Thanks to this, Terror Incarnate's other ability activates, allowing me to special summon Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare from my deck to the field!"

Stardust disappeared with a fierce roar, swiping at Terror Incarnate and bringing her down as well before Yubel roared back onto the field in her final form. She was just as menacing as the last time, and Judai could feel how much she was dying to fight someone now.

The combo honestly wasn't too hard to pull off, but it was definitely showy thanks to it utilizing the current ace monsters of his and Yusei's decks - both were dragons, both were huge, and Stardust Dragon automatically made it a spectacle thanks to it leaving behind a veritable cloud of shiny stars behind whenever it entered and and left the field.

"If those two aren't satisfied by this, then I don't know what will," Yusei muttered to him, causing Judai to have to choke back a loud bark of laughter.

"Well..." the boy mused, drawing his next card with a sigh, "I have to attack this turn or we're going to lose anyway, so... Valkyrion the Magnet Warrior, attack Stratos!"

"In response, I activate my trap card, Staunch Defender!" Judai chirped, grinning victoriously, "When you declare an attack, I get to select one of my monsters. You can only attack this monster for the rest of the turn, and you must attack with all of your monsters! I choose Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare, of course."

With a very excited roar, Yubel ran into the three monsters on the other side of the field, leading to a mess of a fight that ended in her reigning victorious over all three. Of course, this also wiped out the rest of their opponents' life points, though they just laughed and thanked them for the fun match afterwards.

"If you're ever up to it, you should come pay a visit to Duel Academy," the girl suggested, grinning good-naturedly, "Give a speech about having fun during duels and such, we both go there and sometimes the other students are absolutely miserable to talk to because they're so serious."

"I did notice that everyone's so serious now that I'm in the pro leagues," Judai mused, deciding to think about it more later, "Maybe, though I'm pretty sure one of the professors there would do her damnedest to make sure I didn't come within twenty feet of school grounds."

"Not a good student?"

"The absolute worst."

"Just talk to Tenjoin about it later if you end up wanting to," Yusei said, looking over from where he was chatting with the boy and learning about what'd happened to him after that one night years ago.

"Wait, you know Professor Tenjoin?! Jeez, you wouldn't happen to be the student she rants about occasionally whenever she catches someone sleeping in class, would you?" The girl asked.

Judai just sighed, accepting his fate for being known by all the students from now on while Yusei quietly laughed at his misery.

"Look at it this way, at least you don't have people constantly calling you a savior of all things," Yusei mentioned later once they were off stage and safely sequestered away back in a break room. He ruffled Judai's hair when he pouted at him, pulling him into a quick kiss before going to get some water cups for them.

Judai honestly couldn't tell what would be worse at this point - being known as a savior and being practically worshiped or being known as a terrible student and a happy-go-lucky guy who is still 'somehow' amazing at dueling.


	171. Ordering Food

_**6/20/19**_

Yusei rapidly blinked his eyes, feeling the eye-drops work as his eyes suddenly became significantly less itchy than before.

"I really don't like contacts," he complained, sighing as he listened to Judai laugh quietly from the bed in the room.

"I told you, you should've brought your glasses so you could take out them out if your eyes started bothering you," Judai said, and he was right on all accounts because he _had_ told him to bring his glasses. He, of course, hadn't wanted to deal with putting the contacts back in, even if he was much better at doing it now - what he hadn't counted on was the fact that he wasn't used to wearing them for such a long time yet.

Once he could see well enough, Yusei made his way over to the bed next to him and laid down, flopping back onto the sheets and replying, "Yeah, I know. Lesson learned, I suppose."

Right as Judai started to reply, Yusei felt his stomach give off a little growl that he knew Judai would've heard loud and clear; his face warmed slightly in embarrassment as he looked up to find Judai grinning down at him right above his face, one hand poking lightly at his stomach in jest.

"Hungry much?" Judai chirped, though to Yusei's absolute delight, his stomach _also_ growled right then. Now Judai was the one looking sheepish while Yusei raised an eyebrow at him in amusement.

"Hungry much?" Yusei repeated back, laughing at the pouty glare he got in response, "Do we have leftovers from the other night?"

"I think so - if we don't, we can just order something. I don't feel like cooking right now," Judai stated, the idea of getting food seeming to wipe away the effects of being teased, "Actually, even if we do have leftovers, I'm really feeling up to some crappy take-out pizza with all of its oily goodness. Something about it is just appealing right now."

"Same," Yusei agreed, grabbing the hand that'd been poking him and threading their fingers together, "Maybe it's just 'cause we're tired."

"Oh, it definitely is," Judai nodded, adjusting himself so he could lie down next to him and cuddle for a bit while he brought out his phone and started typing away to try and find the best place to order from, "I don't know about you, but all the required talking and stuff is just mentally draining."

"Pretty much - oh, don't do that place. It's the bad kind of crappy."

"Ah. What about this one?"

"Eh... it's decent."

"...And this one?"

"Decent, too."

Judai turned his head and stared at him after that, and he blinked back in confusion.

"Did you guys eat take-out a lot? I thought you were a bunch of ramen-hoarding fanatics, not pizza-ordering fanatics," Judai asked, raising his eyebrows slowly for emphasis.

"We couldn't just eat ramen, obviously," Yusei pointed out, "Pizza just happened to be something we could order a lot of easily."

"I guess that's true," Judai sighed, shrugging to himself for a moment in acceptance of the answer before going back to scrolling through the browser results, "How about this?"

"That one's good," Yusei said, letting Judai put in what he wanted before helping him put in everyone else's orders - he already knew how Crow and Jack liked their pizza, after all, so he could just quickly put that in before changing up his own order a little to try new things. Judai had helped him a lot with trying new foods, after all, and he had a far better idea of what his favorite kinds of foods were at this point, so he could adjust accordingly.

"...Wait," Yusei stated, stopping Judai before he could finish placing it now that all the information they'd needed to enter was in. He'd had a sudden thought, and it was enough of a hassle that he wanted to avoid it altogether, "Put Crow as the one ordering."

"Why?" Judai questioned with a slight frown, though he did as Yusei said and switched the order name to Crow's.

"Because then we can make him answer the door," Yusei replied, tugging Judai a bit closer so he could hug him better, "What if a fan or something ended up being sent, I'd rather avoid that conversation."

Judai stared at him with wide eyes, blinking at the realization as well before grinning and giving him a quick kiss, "You smart, smart man. Good catch!"

Yusei hummed, pulling him back into a deeper kiss the second the order was placed and enjoying the little surprised squeak Judai made as a result. First he got to win a tournament with Judai, and now he got to relax and have a bit of fun with him before getting food?

Today was a very good day.


	172. Call From the Twins

**_6/21/19_**

Judai's phone started ringing early the next morning during breakfast, making everyone pause in confusion because the only one who usually got calls at that time was Crow.

"It's the twins," Judai noted, looking down at his phone and sharing a slightly worried glance with the others before picking it up, "Hello?"

"Hey!" Lua greeted, sounding cheery despite the underlying tense tone in his voice, "First of all, nice victory yesterday at the tournament! We had some last minute classwork to get done so we couldn't go, but we left it on the TV in the background."

"Thanks," Judai replied, smiling at his excitement and going to say something more before he was cut off.

"Second of all! Could you uh... come over? Like, right now?" Lua asked, sounding more sheepish than anything else. Judai could clearly imagine the boy rubbing the back of his head while he was talking with the way he said it.

Still, the question made him pause, putting down the forkful of food he was about to eat as he frowned, "I can, yeah - just eating breakfast right now. Did something happen?"

Normally Luka was the one who called when they did and Lua would take over half-way though, which made this an even odder call than before. Judai's question was very clearly answered a second later, though, when he heard Luka _yelling_ something in the background.

He had _never_ heard Luka raise her voice so loud, but Lua was laughing and getting yelled at soon after, so Judai figured it couldn't be something _too_ serious. Those twins had a really strong bond, after all.

"Apparently there's a duel spirit playing pranks or something and Luka can't get them to go away or calm down," Lua explained after calming down from his laughing fit, "Told me that they told her they were from the spirit realm and just wanted to play, but they've been physically affecting stuff and we've already had some chairs and a table get knocked over by them."

"Ah, it's one of those," Judai stated knowingly, feeling a lot better now that he knew what was going on, "Yeah, that happens sometimes. I'll come over soon, but in the meantime see if Luka can get some more info out of it - things like which specific area they're from and their name."

"Will do! Thanks Judai!" Lua exclaimed. Right before the phone hung up, Judai briefly heard him repeating the information to Luka, though a slightly less loud yell was his response as it was cut off.

"What happened?" Crow asked once he turned his phone off, "You looked worried for a second there."

"Just an errant visiting duel spirit, they like to pop up sometimes and wreck havoc," Judai replied, starting on finishing the rest of his food quickly, "This one's pretty much harmless though, it's just high energy. Said it wanted to play as the reason it crossed over, so they probably felt the twins' spirit connection, saw that they were kids, and decided they were the best playmates."

"Huh, I thought they couldn't interact with things unless they had someone materialize them," Crow blinked, the other two looking satisfied with the answer before going back to their coffee - Yusei and Jack had already finished their food and were both on their second cup of coffee.

That was good, because once Judai was done he and Yusei needed to leave, pronto - Judai wanted to help them out and prevent anymore accidental mayhem as soon as possible, but he also partly wanted to witness Luka yelling at a duel spirit to go away. It sounded _hilarious_ over the phone and he really wanted to see it in person.

"They can't under normal circumstances, but every once in a while a spirit either figures out how to get here or finds a portal or tear or something between dimensions. When they do that, they drag along a lot of excess duel energy, but its effects are weird because of how it got here," Judai explained with a shrug, knowing that it went a little over Crow and Jack's heads, "Don't worry too much if you don't get it, there's a lot of nuanced shit when it comes to duel energy and magic."

"That's an apt way of putting it," Yusei snorted, "I don't want to think about how many times I've had to redo stuff because of said 'nuanced shit', and then sometimes it _changes_ on you and acts completely different."

"Hearing this stuff makes me incredibly glad that I don't have to deal with it," Jack huffed, Crow nodding alongside him in silent agreement.

Both Judai and Yusei ended up laughing at that, sharing a pained, sympathetic look that only ended up making them laugh more - after all, it may be a pain to deal with, but they both lived and breathed duel energy and magic. It may be in different ways, but they loved it all the same and wouldn't give it up for the world.


	173. Errant Duel Spirit

**_6/22/19_**

The door was opened seconds after they knocked on it, revealing a grinning Lua while Luka peeked out from around the corner momentarily before going back to trying to talk to the duel spirit.

"Hey guys!" Lua greeted, moving to the side and quickly shooing them in before shutting the door, "That was fast, thanks."

"Not a problem," Judai replied, ruffling the boy's hair slightly before leading the way towards where he'd seen Luka, "I'm guessing nothing too bad happened?"

"Nah, just a few more knocked over things - more chairs and unfortunately the toaster," Lua said, scrunching up his face and scratching the back of his head, "Still don't quite know what happened there, to be honest, but the lever part got sent flying off of it."

"Fixable," Yusei assured him with a smile, glancing at the kitchen as they passed by - said toaster was on the counter, the broken pieces gathered next to it in a neat little pile, "Definitely fixable."

"See, we've got you guys covered," Judai grinned, coming around the corner only to find just what he'd been hoping to find.

Luka was hopelessly trying to talk to the duel spirit, one of which Judai hadn't seen before, and was flapping her arms around and pouting in frustration at having to deal with them. Kuribon hovered around her, looking on in quiet support and adding in a few coos every now and then to try and make Luka feel better. Meanwhile, some sort of lion-looking duel spirit hovered by the group, though from what Judai could tell from the way he was watching them, he was just trying to make sure things didn't get too out of hand; the guy looked just as amused by the whole thing as he was, though.

"Judai, I tried figuring out what you asked but I didn't get anything," Luka sighed, looking very relieved that he was here to take over, "Sorry."

"Nah, don't worry about it - it was just something to try more than anything else," Judai smiled reassuringly, patting her on the head like he had to Lua earlier before squatting down in front of the duel spirit, who looked to be a little girl with a staff covered in flowers.

"Oh! Are you going to play too?!" The duel spirit exclaimed, practically jumping up and down in place, "It's so different here! I wanna play!"

"Well, I'll do that if you tell me a few things," Judai replied lightly, quickly thinking of a way to grab her attention and get her to listen to him, "After all, it's a lot more fun to play with a friend you actually know about, right?" Thankfully this seemed to work as she stopped moving and gave him her full attention, so he continued, saying, "Let's start with this - I'm Judai Yuki, what's your name?"

She smiled widely, looking at him in excitement and nodding as she replied, "Aromage Jasmine, at your service!"

"That sounds familiar..." Luka mused, frowning to herself before turning to her lion duel spirit and asking, "Regulus, do you recognize the name?"

Ah, so his name was Regulus - Judai found it a little funny at how the lion duel spirit was essentially named 'regal', considering how it sounded.

"I do," Regulus replied, tail flickering slightly as he studied Jasmine curiously, "Aromages reside in the forest next to ours, though considering the sheer size of Ancient Fairy Dragon's domain I'm not surprised to have never met one of that group before."

And that answered all of Judai's questions, for the most part - now all he had to do was figure out how to convince her to go back. He could feel the duel energy she'd dragged along with her, and while it wasn't harmful necessarily, he still wanted it out and back in the spirit dimension due to its denseness; it could have harmful effects on Jasmine if it stayed latched to her like this for too long, but going back would make it disperse back into the air there.

He gave Yusei a short wave and a cheeky smile, telling him, "I've got this covered, don't worry. It might take a while though, so you and Lua can go figure out something to pass the time with if you want."

Yusei gave him a small smile and a nod back, and Judai watched fondly for a moment as he led Lua back towards the kitchen so he could get a better look at the broken toaster before turning back to the misplaced duel spirit and getting to work.


	174. Convincing

_**6/23/19**_

Judai introduced Winged Kuriboh and decided to let them play around for an hour or so, though this time with supervision so there weren't anymore knocked over chairs, tables, or toasters. There almost were a few times, but well, Judai's shadows were very good at catching things. Luka and Kuribon ended up joining in after a little while too, and to Judai's relief she seemed to be having fun now that Jasmine was being semi-reasonable. By the end of it, Jasmine seemed to be a bit more receptive to trying to talk to her about anything other than playing, especially when Winged Kuriboh pitched in to help convince her that she needed to go back.

"So... I really could get hurt if I don't go back?" She questioned, sounding a lot more down-to-earth now as she wrapped her head around what she'd been told.

"You will," Judai confirmed, sitting down on the couch in front of her, "I've helped a few others get home safely when they found themselves here, so you're in good hands. Plus, Luka here will go too, so you can play with her and Winged Kuriboh on the way back."

Jasmine continued to frown for a few moments before nodding in agreement and cheering, "Okay! I understand. Let's go!"

"I'm interested to see what your forest is like," Luka mentioned, looking up in thought and glancing at Regulus, "I've never really gone out of Ancient Fairy Dragon's domain, so it's a new experience."

"It's super pretty!" Jasmine exclaimed excitedly, practically bouncing around as she talked, "There's tons of different flowers and herbs and stuff! We use them for our magic."

"Well, that explains the 'Aromage' part of your name," Judai mused before getting back up and moving towards the kitchen, "Come on guys, let's get the other two and go. I'm sure they won't want to be left alone here while we explore."

In the kitchen, Yusei and Lua seemed to just be finishing up fixing the toaster - at some point Yusei had brought in his tools from the storage in his bike, and he'd decided to make it a learning experience for Lua by explaining to him what to do while Lua himself fixed up and put together the parts. Judai had spotted Yusei earlier helping him out a little bit, though, when Lua wasn't quite strong enough to bend some of the metal pieces back into shape.

"Hey," Yusei greeted, glancing over with a smile, "We finished fixing it, how's it going for you?"

"She agreed to go back, and I figured you guys would want to come with and see a bit of the forest she's from," Judai explained, motioning for them to stand up, "Plus, it could very well take half the day to get there in the first place. We're starting smack-dab in the middle of Ancient Fairy's area because that's the only place Luka can appear in at the moment, and apparently the forest she's from is on the outskirts of the place."

Lua hopped eagerly off his chair, eyes practically sparkling at the idea of being able to interact with duel spirits again. Judai shared an amused glance with Yusei, both of them grinning and laughing a little bit and causing Lua to pout playfully and go hang out with his sister. Yusei got himself up after a little while and made sure to give Judai a quick kiss after looking over and noticing that no one was paying much attention to them.

"I kind-of wish I had the readers Johan and I made for duel energy," Yusei admitted, seemingly automatically wrapping an arm around him when Judai decided he wanted to cuddle for a moment and leaned into his side while he talked, "It'd be interesting to see if they'd one, have similar readings to the reactor site and two, would even work in the first place."

Judai hummed at the idea before suddenly remembering something and looking up at him, "Oh yeah, don't be surprised if we're suddenly joined by some of our duel monsters. Since we have their cards, it doesn't matter where they usually are - they can just come straight to us through the card." He paused for a moment at another thought, saying, "If we end up meeting Ancient Fairy Dragon, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to see Stardust appear, so there's that too."

"Understood," Yusei smiled, nodding down at him and giving him another quick kiss before letting go of him, much to Judai's disappointment, "Alright, let's go. The sooner we start, the better chance we have in getting home for dinner on time."

"Shoot, you're right," Judai groaned, now thinking about all the ways they could possibly be held up and made late, "Alright, let's go wrangle all the kids together and- hey! Watch it guys, the table! The table, look!"


	175. Portals

_**6/24/19**_

"Alright, I just need you to think really hard about your home, okay?" Judai said, putting a hand on Jasmine's head after she nodded in understanding.

He could open portals, but it wasn't actually something he used often - when he was travelling he liked to take in all the sights and take his time, so he really only used it if he needed to make a quick get away and had nothing else at his disposal or there was an emergency with one of his friends. Plus, if he'd never actually been to the place he was trying to get to, it wasn't very accurate and would sometimes place him somewhere within a ten mile radius of it. Luckily it could also be used for getting to and from the spirit realm and worked in relatively the same way, with only a few minor differences in how much energy it took and how he had to weave it open; it could also be used with another person visualizing the area, but it was basically guaranteed at that point that it'd open up somewhere around it instead.

It took a minute, but soon enough his shadows all conglomerated into one mass in the middle of the room, almost like a door they could step through. He could feel the spirit realm on the other side of the connection, so it had worked like a charm.

"Nifty," Yusei commented, blinking rather nonchalantly at the portal - then again, they'd both time travelled at this point and endured a number of things, so portals weren't really too big of a stretch.

"Woah, so cool!" Lua exclaimed, the three younger ones in the room all staring with wonder at it, "And it's perfectly safe?"

"Perfectly safe," Judai reassured, walking next to it so he could demonstrate by poking his head in quickly just to check the other side. It was definitely a forest, and there were a lot of flowers and other plants like Jasmine had described, so at least it was in the right area. With that he pulled his head back out to grin at them, giving them a thumbs up as he continued, "See? Perfectly safe. Also, it's open in the right place, so let's go!"

He paused when the kids didn't move, instead staring at him now like he'd grown a second head. Yusei looked to be just as confused about it luckily, so Judai wasn't the only one not understanding what'd happened.

"...W-warn us next time, please," Luka mumbled, narrowing her eyes at him in a scrutinizing pout once she got her bearings back, "That was- if this were, like, a m-movie, that would've been the scene where you jinxed yourself and died or something."

 _Oops_ , Judai thought, giving the three now glaring kids a sheepish smile as he apologized, _Didn't think about that._

" _Y'know, sometimes I think you might actually be a good 'older brother' type, but then you do stuff like this and I'm reminded that you're definitely not_ ," Yubel chuckled at him.

 _I am a_ _ **perfect**_ _'older brother' type_ , Judai retorted, barely keeping the pout off his face as he coaxed the three through the portal.

" _More like a clutz,_ " Haou stated, his amusement spreading through the back of his head, " _You'd be the older brother who ended up getting taken care of by your younger sibling, because you're so prone to stupidity._ "

 _Ah, just shut up_ , Judai replied resignedly, sagging slightly once it was just him and Yusei.

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him in amusement, asking, "You talking to the two of them?"

"They said I'm not good older brother material," Judai explained, looking at Yusei pitifully in hopes that he'd tell him it wasn't true, "I'm at least decent, right?"

" _Oh! Now Yusei, on the other hand, is_ _ **perfect**_ _older brother material_ ," Yubel added with a snicker, " _Both him and Haou, actually. Cool, calm, and collected - they'd just be on opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of showing their affection._ "

" _Don't bring me into this_ ," Haou muttered, while Judai just sighed even more resignedly.

"And... Yubel just said that you and Haou are perfect older brother material," Judai continued, though he brightened up considerably when Yusei ruffled his hair lightly with a fond smile.

"I'm not sure about that one-" Yusei said, Yubel scoffing immediately at the irony of the words proving her point, "-but I think you'd be a good one. You've got the playfulness and the energy for it, at least - foxy, remember?"

"Right," Judai nodded, grinning up at him and giving him a quick peck on the lips, "A very lovable fox, right?"

And then Judai very _playfully_ shoved him through the portal with a toothy smile, laughing at the cute, surprised look on the other's face right before he went through.


	176. Strolling

_**6/25/19**_

"You were right, it's really pretty here," Luka mentioned, walking next to Jasmine in the front. The duel spirit had recognized which part of the forest they were in almost immediately and was leading the way towards where she lived with her sisters, apparently.

"Isn't it?!" Jasmine exclaimed, an extra hop in her step as she grinned widely, "I love this place! It was fun to explore a bit, but I still love this the most."

Lua followed close behind them, far more occupied with chatting with some of his Morphtronics who had appeared the second they put together that he was in the spirit dimension somehow. In fact, they all had duel spirits appear once they'd crossed over, so they had quite the large entourage as they travelled through the forest.

Judai and Yusei stayed at the back of the group to watch over the others, holding hands as they walked and chatting about duel energy and differences in the spirit dimension. Judai ended up doing most of the talking, mainly because Yusei was the one asking all the questions and listening intently as he rambled about weird encounters he'd had in different dimensions.

"-and don't even get me started with Neo Space," Judai laughed, swinging their arms lightly as he fully enjoyed the moment, "It's like the water dimension, except with y'know, _space_. You can breathe there, hell there's water on some of the planets but you can _still_ breathe underwater as well. I flipped out a little bit the first time I ended up there, to be honest, because I was fully expecting to not be able to do anything of the sort."

"Just how many different dimensions are there?" Yusei asked, looking up in thought, "You covered a pretty large variety there. Are they all different like that?"

"The main ones are, but then they're all split into smaller parts that end up being mostly the same," Judai explained, "And for your previous question, I... I don't know. I've already witnessed a new one being made and an old one dying, so I'd doubt that it's even possible to add them."

"So there's a lot, then," Yusei deduced, pulling Judai over to him and readjusting so his arm went around his shoulders and held him in place as they walked. Judai really liked the warmth of it, hugging back with one arm and laughing slightly when Yusei leaned down to kiss his forehead.

"Pretty much, yeah. And there's _tons_ of duel monsters everywhere in every one, it's always a sight to behold," Judai smiled, gripping his hand tightly again as he pulled away from the hug so he could gesture a bit easier, "Some of them have fighting, but for the most part they're either peaceful by default or they end up coming to a reason to try and do better."

"Oh! Here it is, come look guys!" Jasmine interrupted, waving everyone up to the front to join her by her home. There was a huge garden of various plants and herbs in the front and all around it, along with a red-headed girl sitting down in the garden with a book and a cup of tea, "Sis! It's my sis, Bergamot! Hi!"

The red-headed girl looked up immediately at the sound of them approaching, seeing Judai first and sending him a quiet warning glare before catching Jasmine when she tackle-hugged her.

 _Think she knows my status as Supreme King?_ Judai wondered, pondering over the reaction to him being an immediate glare. Then again, to give her credit, they did have a really big group so it was probably a little bit of both annoyance and sensing that something about Judai wasn't quite normal.

"Where did you go, Jasmine?!" Bergamot reprimanded, bopping Jasmine on the head lightly before going on to lecture her for a few minutes. Jasmine looked a bit more sheepish by the end of it, though, and probably wouldn't be making the same mistake as last time, "Everyone was worried about you, we saw you for breakfast but after? It was like you'd just disappeared.

"I accidentally went into the human world!" Jasmine explained, twirling her staff around like it was a baton to occupy herself with something, "Nothing bad happened! But these guys helped me get back, they're nice!"

"Thank you for bringing her back," Bergamot said, turning to face them with a smile, "She can be a bit of a troublemaker sometimes, I hope she didn't give you too much trouble."

"Nothing we couldn't fix," Yusei replied before Judai or anyone else could, making everyone there, including Bergamot laugh in amusement.

"You guys are mean," Jasmine pouted, huffing and going into the house - Judai caught a glimpse of a grin before she disappeared, though, so he knew she wasn't actually mad.

"Allow me to give you a few things as thanks," Bergamot stated, gesturing for them to all follow her in the house as well, "We _are_ a shop, after all, and- don't ask how we know, but all our products work just as well in the human world."

Judai answered Yusei's slightly cautious look with a reassuring grin, easily agreeing and leading the way inside for the other three. He knew there was nothing to worry about here, plus he was really interested in seeing what exactly Aromages could make for doing magic using the materials they did.


	177. Thank You Gifts

_**6/26/19**_

They ended up leaving with a _lot_ of room fragrances and washing supplies - shampoo, conditioner, body wash, laundry detergent, _all_ of that stuff. There were other things in the shop too, like potions that had a variety of... odd effects when you drank it (to be honest, Yusei wasn't sure about a few of them considering he didn't even know a few of the words used - Judai seemed to be the only to recognize them and had immediately vetoed choosing them) and little enchanted nick-knacks that could do things like speed up a plant's growth, but they didn't really have any use for them; thus, they stuck with the 'make everything smell good' products.

They'd insisted on them taking so much, too, no matter how much any of them tried to refute it, stating that they couldn't repay them enough unless they did. Judai caved after two tries with a resigned smile, so Yusei followed his lead, figuring at this point that Judai would be the more knowledgeable one when it came to interacting with duel spirits.

"Come back to visit sometime!" Jasmine waved, watching next to both Bergamot and her other sister, Rosemary, who'd been in the shop part of the house when they entered.

"I'll make sure to!" Luka replied, waving back just as enthusiastically, "Now that I know how to get here, I should be able to visit - I'll just have to arrange for someone who can fly or run fast to take me... It's far from the center of Ancient Fairy Dragon's domain, even if it's just on the outskirts."

"It can be arranged, don't worry," Regulus assured, facial expression not changing from his usual stern one. Yusei could hear the fondness in his tone though and could guess that he was happy Luka was making more friends.

Honestly, Yusei was too, especially since the twins would be going to live with their parents after all. They'd decided on it a couple weeks ago, sending out a short message to everyone in the group chat - they also sent the address, which they'd discovered was only a little bit away from one of the bullet train stops and about an hour and a half away, so it made it easy to go visit if they ever wanted them to.

From what he'd gathered based off the twins' tales about school, Lua made friends very quickly so he wasn't worried about him too much. Luka, being a little more shy, didn't do so but still would make a few in a good amount of time, so it was good for her to have a friend who she could still talk to, even if she'd moved away - there was no moving away from the spirit dimension after all, so she'd have a constant friend to talk to.

They stayed at the twins' for dinner considering most of the day was already gone, settling for an early meal that Judai whipped up quickly as no one had eaten anything since breakfast. Once they'd split the gifts they'd gotten, making sure everyone got the specific ones they'd picked out, they piled out of the apartment and barely managed to fit the bag into his storage unit on his bike.

"Whew! Perfect fit," Judai cheered, closing the compartment and locking it up before passing Yusei back the key. As he did so, though, Yusei noticed a little lump in his jacket pocket - considering it was the winter jacket (it was a foggy day, he blamed June gloom for the weird weather every week) it was a little more puffy, so it wasn't something he'd noticed before and based off the size, something that Judai wouldn't have felt due to the extra padding.

"You've got something in your pocket," Yusei pointed out, frowning lightly as he tried to figure out what it could be.

Judai blinked at him in confusion and looked down, quickly running a hand through his pockets before pulling out a flat little glass bottle and a note with very small writing on it. Yusei watched curiously as Judai squinted down at the note, reading it over a few times before looking back up at him with a tentative expression.

"It says that _I_ , in other words the 'fluffy one with the strong energy', should drink it when I'm back home and that it lasts a day," Judai explained, "Doesn't say anything about what it actually _does_ , though."

Yusei hummed, looking at the bottle with slight wariness - surely it wouldn't be too bad, right? The Aromages had seemed plenty nice enough, and they were pretty grateful for their help so he didn't think they'd give them something that'd hurt them at all.

Eventually he shrugged, giving him a small smile and reaching up to fold Judai's hand back over the bottle, "I think it'll be fine, but it's up to you if you want to. Think about it on the way back, okay?"

Judai hummed in agreement, giving him a small, thankful smile in return and hugging him before slipping the bottle back in his pocket and hopping up on the bike.

Yusei thought that it was cute just how quickly Judai latched back onto him this time around when he sat down as well - evidently he was in for some serious cuddling once they got back, potion or no potion to go along with it.


	178. Potion Effects

**_6/27/19_**

After washing up and changing into some more relaxed clothing, Judai seemed to finally make up his mind, nodding to himself after staring at the bottle for a few minutes.

"Gonna try it?" Yusei asked, smiling at the little grin Judai gave him in answer.

"Well, I've never been one to pass up an adventure, no matter the form of it," Judai replied, popping it open, "Besides, it lasts twenty-four hours, right? We're not doing anything tomorrow, are we?"

"Nope, tomorrow's the last day before I have to turn in my research," Yusei confirmed, scooting closer to him on the bed and watching him as he downed the potion in one go, "How's it taste?"

"Some sorta berry flavor," Judai said, blinking down at the empty bottle and putting it away on the side table before frowning, "Wonder how long it'll take to do its thing."

In the bottom corner of his vision, a tiny little sparkle caught Yusei's eye, right behind where Judai was seated; right afterwards some sparkles appeared towards the top of Judai's head as well.

"Not very long," Yusei commented, pointing up at his head when he was met with a confused stare, "You're sparkling."

"Sparkling?" Judai questioned, getting up so he could go look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Yusei followed him quickly, noting that the little glints of light were starting to form a more solid shape and that as they did so, Judai had started twitching a little like he could feel what was happening.

They both watched in fascination as they finished forming, leaving behind ears and a bushy tail, the same colors as Judai's hair.

"Oh my gods," Judai breathed, staring wide-eyed at his reflection and reaching up to touch the twitching ears, "Are these _fox_ ears? How did they _know_ about that?"

Yusei couldn't find the words to reply with - he was too busy admiring the sight and being amused by the cute way his tail had started wagging without him realizing it. Somehow the other's hair had become _more_ fluffy than it already usually was, and the whole image made it impossible for him to hold back from petting his ears.

Judai froze the second he touched them, having been too busy looking behind him at his tail to see him reach up and start scratching lightly behind his new fox ears. And to Yusei's utter fascination, he practically fell into his hand, turning to face him and looking up at him with the most pleased look on his face.

"Holy shit," Judai practically purred, grabbing onto his hoodie for balance - Yusei waited for him to say more, but he seemed to be struggling with the words, so he stopped for a moment to lead them back over the bed so they could sit, pulling him into his lap. Once Judai got his bearings back he finally managed to continue, "That's really fucking good, like imagine-"

Yusei started scratching again while he was talking, smirking a little at the way Judai cut himself off with a strangled little noise and dug his head into his shoulder.

"Evil," Judai mumbled, causing him to chuckle a little. His tail wagging quickly caught his attention though now that he could see it clearly, and Yusei suddenly needed to know what sort of reaction that would get from him.

Judai was _pouting_ when he stopped petting his ears, pulling back to look at him and paying no mind to the hand starting to trail down his back, "Why'd you sto- _ah-_!"

Yusei brushed his tail lightly, smirking widely now as Judai immediately flushed a dark red, giving him a glare he ended up being unable to hold as he went on to repeat the action.

"Sensitive," Yusei muttered lowly into his ear, enjoying the little shiver Judai made when he pet the tail again.

"S-stop it," Judai stuttered out, prompting him to do so and wait for him to gain his composure again.

"Too much?" Yusei asked worriedly, going to pull back but being stopped by the tight grip Judai had on him.

"Not- no, just wasn't prepared for it," Judai replied, looking back up at him with a still very red face, slightly parted lips and ever-so-slightly glazed-over eyes.

How could Yusei possibly resist _this_? And with those ears twitching and fitting Judai so perfectly as he stared up at him?

It was very satisfying to have his idea of Judai being most like a fox confirmed, while also getting to see a cute side of him that was a little rare to see.

"So I can do it more, right?"

"...A little more."

Yusei pulled him as close as he could, just barely letting their lips ghost each other as he stated, "I'm using my pass, that okay?"

Judai blinked in surprise before flushing once again, swallowing thickly before nodding with wide eyes and a nervous, but genuine smile that Yusei was quick to smother in a kiss; he smirked into it with a dark chuckle when Judai made a muffled noise at the sudden hand on his tail around the base, the other hand reaching up to scratch behind one of his ears.

This probably wasn't the intent at all, but it was certainly _fun_. That was all that really mattered in the end.


	179. Sleepy Fox

_**6/28/19**_

"Yusei, do me a favor and get off the bed for a second," Judai muttered later that night, his fingers twitching slightly around the sheets under him. He just couldn't get comfortable enough to actually sleep, no matter how good it felt to have Yusei scratching his ears constantly.

And that was saying something, because it felt _really_ nice to have his temporary fox ears pet. He was still in a slight state of bliss from earlier because of the constant attention to them.

Luckily his wonderful boyfriend didn't ask any questions, simply doing as he asked while Judai sat up and stared at the sheets for a few seconds - suddenly something seemed to click, though, so he followed his instincts and started gathering up the sheets and blankets, even going so far as to grab some of the extra ones from out of the closet. By the time he was done the bed was a veritable mess, but to him it was a well-organized, satisfying creation.

"Won't it get too hot to sleep with all of those?" Yusei asked, a small smile on his face as he walked over to get a closer look at the final product.

"No," Judai said confidently, not entirely sure why he knew this but deciding not to question it, "Now get over here and - hey, careful!" He lightly smacked Yusei's hand away from part of what he was just going to dub a 'modified blanket fort', giving him a playful glare, "No touching that part, come over here and don't destroy it."

"I don't think touching it once would destroy it," Yusei replied amusedly, raising an eyebrow but following his directions anyway. It took a little while, but eventually Judai was satisfied with the set-up and he curled up into his side with a happy sigh, incredibly glad to find that he was finally able to relax and get comfortable.

"Much better," he grinned, unashamedly letting out a pleased hum when hands went back to stroking his ears lightly.

"It's surprisingly not as hot as I thought it'd be," Yusei admitted, blinking at all the sheets and blankets surrounding them before glancing at the open window, "Maybe it's because it's a cold night..."

"No, it's made to be cool," Judai corrected, pausing for a moment at his own answer before continuing, "Huh, I wonder if that potion does more than just give me ears and a tail?"

"I'm pretty sure it does, the evidence thus proves it," Yusei agreed, turning his head to kiss his forehead for a moment, "You're a lot more playful and pushy than usual, to be honest. For instance, when you asked me to get off the bed it was more of a demand than anything else - usually you'd tack on a 'please' or a 'can', but you didn't."

"Did I? I hadn't noticed," Judai frowned, earning himself another kiss to the forehead that made him smile again, "You have your phone, right? Let's look up fox behaviors before we sleep, then tomorrow will be a bit easier to deal with... hopefully."

Yusei laughed quietly, causing him to look up at him in confusion as to what was so funny.

"You did it again just now," Yusei smirked down at him teasingly, "How pushy, I don't know if I should do it if I'm being demanded to."

Judai felt his face warm slightly in embarrassment once he mentally went back over what he'd said, sheepishly replying, "Ah, sorry."

"Don't worry about it, you can't really help it right now," Yusei assured him, pulling out his phone and holding it in view of both of them, "Plus I think it's interesting to see just how these extras are affecting you. It's a pretty novel experience, isn't it?"

"True," Judai nodded, feeling a bit better about the oddities he was starting to face, "Alright, I'll make sure to tell you if anything else happens that I notice."

Yusei hummed, prompting Judai to look over for a second - that was when he finally noticed the way his eyes were glinting, that same kind of expression that he'd get whenever he found something that interested him that he wanted to completely figure out falling easily into place. He paused at the sight, wondering if he should try to tease him about it before realizing that he'd probably just shrug and grin while agreeing with most of them.

Instead he asked curiously, "Later, would want to... buy another one of these?"

"The potions? I don't see the harm in it, especially if it only lasts a day. I wonder if they have different types, too."

"Hope they can make a cat one for you..."

"Sticking with our analogies, then?"

"Yeah. But I also wanna see you with actual cat ears and a tail - I wonder, would you immediately curl up on the couch and sleep?" Judai mused.

"...If it was warm enough, then probably," Yusei admitted, tapping the screen in his hand lightly, "Remember when we visited Kaiba Dome and slept on the stadium playing site? Every time after that where we went in the sun, it just felt so nice that I almost fell asleep a couple of times."

"Yeah, you're definitely like a cat," Judai chuckled, leaning his head back into Yusei's hand, who ruffled his hair a bit before going back to his ears. It only took a minute of this for his eyes to droop, so hopefully Yusei would remember what info he'd found in the morning.

He was out in two, feeling completely relaxed and safe in the blanket fort and Yusei's arms.


	180. Appetite

**_6/29/19_**

Waking up the next morning was as nice had it had been falling asleep - Judai was curled up into his side when Yusei slowly blinked awake, tail flopped over both of them while his hair and ears tickled his face thanks to his head being buried in his shoulder. His arm was actually numb and slightly uncomfortable, but he really didn't feel like trying to move and fix that at the moment, so he didn't.

He drifted in that half-awake state for a little while longer until he finally couldn't hold onto it anymore - it was something he'd managed to get used to after a couple insistent tugs back to bed on some mornings, and he considered it a skill at this point. It was just _odd_ at first to sleep-in and try to hold on to that groggy state of being considering he'd been so used to just waking up and getting up immediately.

Well... if he was awake now, then he might as well wake Judai up too. He enjoyed waking him up in the mornings, to be honest, as he liked to think of it as a small way of getting back at him for making him sleep-in all the time and enjoy it; of course he always woke the other up _nicely_ , not at all in a bad way. Yusei wasn't that mean, though sometimes he was tempted to if Judai'd done something exceptionally embarrassing the previous day.

Like that morning after the spider incident.

He shivered just thinking about it, so he shoved the entire memory into the back of his mind.

He lightly pet his fox ears, smiling fondly at the way the other clung to him slightly tighter in response. A few coaxing scratches later, Judai mumbled something unintelligible, slowly blinking his eyes open before letting out a peaceful sigh and looking up at him.

"G'mornin'," Judai said quietly, voice still laced with sleep as a slow smile formed on his face.

"Mornin'," Yusei replied, "Sleep well?"

Judai hummed in confirmation, nodding slightly and yawning as he stretched out, his tail flopping back and forth a little once he started moving, "Did you?"

"Definitely," he grinned, finally able to shake feeling back into his arm now that Judai had moved off of it and sat up, "Ready for breakfast?"

"Breakfast sounds good," Judai agreed, moving closer for a moment to tug him down for a slow morning kiss. Both of them smiled into it, enjoying the feeling for a bit before pulling apart, Judai continuing on to say, "Something with meat sounds good for some reason... sausage? Bacon?"

"Foxes are carnivores."

"Ah, right. Makes sense."

It took a little while to get out of the bed because Judai was still being picky about his piles of blankets - Yusei couldn't see it, personally, but apparently they were all meticulously placed, so he wasn't going to question it. Besides, one of the things he'd read last night was about how foxes usually found a den or burrowed into the ground in some way to sleep, so maybe it had something to do with that? It _had_ stated that it was to stay cool, and somehow Judai had managed to do something similar with blankets...

He didn't understand how adding more blankets equaled being cooler when you settled into them. Just another thing to learn about, he supposed.

Pharaoh greeted them after they'd started to cook breakfast, meowing loudly as he trotted into the kitchen. Yusei didn't think much of it until he noticed that Judai had paused, subconsciously moving the pan of bacon he was cooking off the heat for the moment as he stared down at the cat with narrowed eyes.

"...Say that again," Judai stated, giving the cat a pointed look and gesturing for him to get on with it when he gave him a look of confusion. Both Pharaoh and Yusei glanced at each other in confusion when after he did, Judai started gaping at the feline and dropped to the floor to pick him up.

"Oh my gods I can understand you," Judai breathed, an excited grin slowly growing on his face as his eyes lit up at the realization, "I can understand you! Say something else!"

Yusei watched intriguingly as Pharaoh meowed again, cocking his head to the side while his tail started to wag in excitement as well. Evidently the potion did even more than just make Judai take on a lot of fox characteristics, though this was a very welcome addition to the growing list of effects; the cat was old, and he remembered Judai saying that he was the only one who knew about a lot of things that'd happened, so this was a very good opportunity to learn about those things.

"What's my favorite food? Ebi fry, of course," Judai grinned, getting a nod from the cat in his arms as confirmation that he'd heard him correctly, "We have _so_ much to talk about!"

"I'll take care of the rest of this, there's not too much left," Yusei said, amused by the way both of the others' tails were now wagging in sync, "Go sit on the couch, the kitchen chairs probably won't be the most comfortable things right now considering the solid back."

"Thanks love!" Judai beamed, running over to give him a quick hug and peck on the cheek in thanks before exiting the kitchen, Pharaoh following right on his heels.

... _Ebi fry, huh?_ Yusei noted, pulling out a few plates as he started pulling things off the stove, _I'll have to keep that in mind._


	181. Cheeky Fox

**_6/30/19_**

Yusei ended up bringing all the food out to the living room, laying the plates out on the coffee table. He figured it'd be easier this way, plus then Judai wouldn't have to deal with the kitchen chairs - the hard backs didn't go well with having a tail, and the last thing he wanted was for Judai to be unnecessarily uncomfortable.

"No way, he did what? I never thought that he would be able to find so- oh! Yusei, food's ready?" Judai asked, cutting himself off when he noticed him thanks to the clack of the plates against the table.

"Yup," Yusei smiled, gesturing towards one of the plates before making his way back to the kitchen to get drinks, "That one's yours, it has more meat on it. I made you your coffee, too."

"Awesome!~" Judai sang, eagerly picking up the utensils and digging in, "Love you, Yusei!~"

When Yusei came back out a few moments later with two drinks, he raised an eyebrow at Judai snickering to himself about something, "What's so funny?"

"Ah- I just thought of somethin'," Judai explained, swallowing first when Yusei gave him a pointed look, "So I say 'love you', and then the first syllable of your name is 'yu', so I could be saying 'love you' but with 'you' not actually being 'you' but... well, you! Get it?"

"Uh huh, I get it," Yusei hummed, giving him an amused smile. He sat down roughly, bouncing the other up in the air slightly and making him laugh at the playful move.

"Every time I say it now for the next week I'm going to think of that," Judai mused, still laughing to himself about the pun as he went on to eat. He snuck a little piece of sausage to Pharaoh, who took it eagerly and meowed happily afterwards.

"At least I'll know why you're laughing every time," Yusei replied, also breaking off a tiny piece of sausage for Pharaoh to eat and waving him over to the other side of the couch. Pharaoh took it gently out of his fingers, rubbing up under his hand in thanks after he finished chewing on it.

It fell silent for a little while as they ate, though eventually the smell of food must've woken up the other two because a door creaked open a few minutes later.

"Mornin'," Jack greeted, trotting down the stairs and turning the corner, "What'd you guys m- what the _fuck_?"

"There's plenty extra in the kitchen, just go get yourself a plate," Yusei said, face completely straight. He grinned internally when Judai choked on a laugh at his blatant ignorance of Jack's confusion.

"No no no, _explain_ ," Jack demanded, huffing slightly in resignation at yet another weird magic thing occurring, "Why does Judai have ears? Are those bloody _real_?"

"I've got a tail too," Judai replied cheekily, flashing him a toothy smile before shoving another bite of food in his mouth, "You should really try the food, it's good. Like Yusei said, there's more in the kitchen."

Jack's eye twitched as they continued to leave his question unanswered, both of them waiting for Crow to inevitably appear so they could pull the same thing on him. Sure enough, he came down only a couple minutes after Jack did, having nearly the exactly same reaction to seeing Judai as Jack had.

"Why is Jack yelli- the hell? Do you have fox ears?!"

"There's food in the kitchen."

"You should go get it, it's really good."

They finally cracked at the combined exasperated looks from Jack and Crow, snickering at the way they focused on it so hard.

Yusei took mercy on them, explaining, "Magic potion, lasts twenty-four hours - it'll run out tonight around eight or nine-ish. Can talk to Pharaoh now, apparently."

"And how, exactly, did you get one of those?" Jack sighed, accepting the answer a lot more quickly than he usually would - maybe he was finally starting to become desensitized to these things too, though he was a little bit behind Crow in that regards.

"When we helped get that duel spirit back home yesterday, they lived at a shop filled with stuff like this," Judai said, pausing for a moment before lighting up in remembrance, "Oh yeah! Speaking of which, we've got a shit ton of really good shampoo and that kind of stuff because they insisted on giving us something in thanks, so feel free to go through them and take whatever you want."

"I'll go get it after I finish eating," Yusei offered, noting the intrigued looks both of them sported, "They're laced with a little bit of magic to make them work well, but... just make sure you read the labels well. None of it is anything bad, but some of them are a little... odd."

"That wild berry one is off-limits though," Judai cut in, narrowing his eyes in a playful glare to the rest of them, "Off. Limits. Got it?"

"Aye aye, captain," Crow snorted, brushing past Jack to get to the kitchen, "We won't touch it, don't worry your furry little ears off, mister."

They all laughed at that one, especially when one of said ears flicked for a moment and accidentally hit Yusei on the side of his head lightly.


	182. Lazy Boredom

_**7/1/19**_

"I'm bored," Judai complained a couple hours later, flopped over on his stomach on top of Yusei on the couch with his head buried in a pillow. He'd been talking to Pharaoh for most of the time, but apparently he'd learned enough or the conversation had come to an end because the cat had wandered off out the window.

Yusei hummed, not at all bothered by the lazy laying about they were doing unlike Judai, and occupied himself with simply petting the other's ears to get him to relax. The tail was once again in his vision, in fact it was just off to the side thanks to their current position, and eventually became too tempting to resist teasing quickly as well - the immediate jump and pouty glare backwards at him was well worth it and cute, and he returned it with a smug smile.

"Thought you'd had enough of that," Judai muttered, though his frown easily smoothed out into a content smile as Yusei went back to paying attention to his ears.

"Sorry, but it was _right there_ ," Yusei apologized, pulling him up momentarily so he could stand up and stretch out his legs. They'd fallen asleep at some point during Judai's talk with Pharaoh, seeing as he'd let him stay in that position the entire time while he browsed on the tablet for anything new and interesting.

A fluffy tail hit his legs playfully once he was up before Judai sat up as well, looking up at him with a mischievous grin on his face while leaning his head on an arm on his leg, "Don't worry, I'm sure I'll understand when the time comes for you to be a half-cat. Somethin' to look forward to, right?"

"You're not going to just let me nap all day, are you?" Yusei sighed, smiling and patting him on the head when Judai nodded enthusiastically, "Oh well, I guess it's for a good cause. Anyway, can you think of anything to do?"

"You," Judai replied with a fanged, shit-eating grin.

Yusei gave him an unimpressed look, " _Other_ than that."

"Damn it, you're becoming resistant to that," Judai noted with a sigh, looking off to the side as he tried to actually think of something to do this time, "...Pranks? We could rig something up for when the other two get back."

"Good enough," Yusei shrugged, not having a problem with it - he'd actually warned the other two discretely, making sure that Judai wasn't within his absurd hearing range, that it was a definite possibility that day, so at least they'd be expecting it. It was one of the first things that came to mind when he thought of an actual, foxy, _mischievous_ Judai, so he agreed to it easily, "You have all those arts and crafts supplies up in the closet, right? Will that be enough for it?"

"Yeah, it'll be enough!" Judai assured him, hopping up off the couch and sidling up to his side, latching onto his arm and tugging him along. They stumbled slightly as they got used to the uneven distribution of weight and Yusei was sure for a split second that Judai was going to accidentally pull him down to the floor, but they didn't and they continued up the stairs well enough.

"You're very huggy today," Yusei noticed, raising an eyebrow at him when he didn't unlatch himself once they got in the room. He wasn't complaining of course - Judai was warm, after all, and it was always nice to have cuddly hugs with him.

"Says the one who's been fixated on my fox stuff all day," Judai retorted, pulling him down for a short kiss, "You're touchy, but not _this_ touchy usually."

Yusei huffed in amusement - he wasn't wrong, obviously; Judai was so cute, though, that he really couldn't help it, especially when Judai himself had been the one to tell him he was allowed to do it all he wanted when he worried about it for the first and only time.

He leaned down and stole another kiss from him, chuckling afterwards, "Come on, help me pull out the boxes mister foxy fox. Let's make sure this prank is a good one."


	183. Last Minutes

_**7/2/19**_

They'd sequestered themselves away in their room after making dinner, hiding from the dirty, judging looks the other two gave them. Thankfully this was something they knew they'd get over quickly and laugh about afterwards, but for now?

For now they hid.

"How long do you think it'll take for them to find the ones in their closet?" Judai snickered, looking entirely too pleased with the outcome as his tail flicked back and forth. After a bit of brainstorming they had eventually settled on something that wouldn't be messy and was more fun than anything else, and hid tons of little paper folded drawings and duel monsters all over their rooms. In their sheets, in the drawers, in the closets, in clothing pockets, on top of their desks, in bags - they didn't miss a single place.

It'd taken quite a bit of time, but it'd been fun and a perfect way to pass the day; plus, seeing Crow and Jack slowly lose their minds over the span of five or ten minutes as they realized just how thorough they'd been in placing them was more than worth the amount of hours put in.

"I'm sure we'll hear about it when they do," Yusei replied, Judai's grin being all too contagious and making him smirk as well. They laughed together for a little while longer, adding in little bits about what kinds of things they'd drawn and where they'd put them.

"Ah... now that I think about it, what time is it?" Judai remembered after, reaching up to feel his fox ears, "These should be going away soon, right?"

"In about ten minutes, actually," Yusei answered, checking his phone quickly for the time. He'd barely put it back on the side table before suddenly Judai was in front of him, plopping himself in his lap and wrapping his arms around his neck with a sly smile.

"I know you want to play with them more, so go ahead," Judai stated, resting his head in the crook of his neck.

Yusei wasn't going to just let such an offer go to waste, so he went straight to scratching the fluffy ears, tugging him closer and adjusting his position on his lap so it was more comfortable. He could feel Judai hum into his neck with a pleased sound, though his face heated up at the sudden lick and light scratch of fangs against his skin.

"Oi," he muttered lowly, observing the way his tail seemed to speed up in wagging - clearly this had been his plan all along. It certainly made his sudden boldness make a lot more sense, at least.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure not to bite too hard," Judai cheekily replied, cutting off his response easily with another brush of his tongue and a nibble, "No blood, I promise. I'm not a vampire, obviously."

"This is revenge for earlier, isn't it," Yusei stated knowingly once he had a moment where he wasn't holding back strangled noises, narrowing his eyes and quickly taking advantage of it to pull Judai down just slightly; the little pause of confusion Judai had gave him enough time to turn and suck harshly at the point where his ears met his hair, ignoring the slightly gross feel of the fur in his mouth and focusing on holding him place.

"H-hey! Yus-Yusei!" Judai squeaked, his arms forming a vice grip around him in an effort to mitigate some of what he must be feeling right now. The little sounds he made were absolutely adorable and he wasn't pushing him away at all, which only spurred Yusei to keep doing it.

"It's only for... five more minutes, roughly," Yusei teased, blowing cool air on the spot for a moment like Judai would do to him on his bike and grinning with satisfaction at the shiver and squeal the other gave, "Surely you can last that long right?"

"I am _getting you back for this_ ," Judai hissed out lowly, face buried in his shoulder and chest now as his arms let go of him only to grip at his front and side instead.

"I look forward to it," Yusei whispered back into his ear, earning himself a resigned sigh and a tiny chuckle before he went back to his ministrations.

He really, really loved this playful banter they always had.


	184. Secret Planning

**_7/3/19_**

Judai blinked at the feeling of something hitting the top of his head and bouncing off, looking away from his sketchbook to see what it was. Upon seeing that it was a little paper drawing of Sonic Chick, he barked out a laugh, looking up at the offender who'd thrown it with an elated smirk.

"It has been _two weeks_ ," Crow stressed, his expression torn between exasperation, annoyance, and being impressed, " _Two weeks_ , and I am _still_ finding these things."

"Yeah?" Judai snickered, picking up the piece of paper and placing it in-between two unused pages of his sketchbook so it wouldn't get damaged - he could reuse them obviously, plus it was a good little doodle. If worse came to worse, he could just make a compilation page or something containing all the little cutouts he and Yusei had made.

"Yeah," Crow replied, sighing before admitting, "They are pretty cool though, I guess."

"You guess?"

"...Fine, they're cool. Just flat out cool, y'know, like the paper they're on."

Judai snorted at the joke, which was so bad yet so good due to how monotonously it'd been said. He decided he wasn't going to get anymore sketching done for now, putting his supplies back on the coffee table and stretching himself off the couch; he pet Pharaoh in apology afterwards when he meowed in annoyance at losing his headrest.

"Sorry old man, but I bet Crow would be more than willing to be your new pillow right now," Judai said, raising an eyebrow up at Crow with a mischievous grin.

Crow rolled his eyes, but came down the stairs anyway, unable to resist the urge to pet the cat, "This was not my plan, y'know. It was simply to flick some paper at you like every other time I've found one of those things."

"I'm very good at destroying carefully laid-out plans," Judai nodded sagely, earning himself a snort from Crow, "Speaking of plans though... hopefully this one I _don't_ destroy somehow."

Crow looked up from the cat at that, staring at him in confusion, "What plan? What're you talking about?"

Yusei wasn't there at the moment, having had to go out to a last-minute work meeting (which, considering it was late at night, had prompted an _extremely_ annoyed sigh that startled Judai when he heard it), so it was the perfect time for him to bring it up.

"Yusei's birthday is coming up," Judai answered simply, watching as Crow continued to stare for a few moments before it clicked in his brain and his face slowly lit up at the realization.

"He doesn't like doing much for it, though," Crow warned, but Judai was already ten steps ahead of him.

"Well, I suppose it's a good thing I got permission from him to plan something," Judai grinned toothily, thinking back to two months beforehand when he'd first learned when his birthday was, "If I remember right, his words were, 'Please don't do anything too big,' so that's permission in my book."

Crow whistled, laughing before calling up to Jack, whose door was open so he could actually hear what was yelled up to him, "Hey Jack! Get down here, we need your help with something!"

"You guys don't look like you need much help," Jack replied a couple seconds later, looking down at them in judgement.

"Judai managed to get Yusei to agree to doing something on his birthday."

Almost instantly after he processed what was said, a feral grin appeared on Jack's face, quickly trailing down the stairs to join them, "We need to plan. _Now._ "

Damn, what had Yusei done to them? Clearly he must have threatened them with something in order to get them to willingly not celebrate his birthday, especially since they were very much the type who would stop at nothing to embarrass who they considered to be their younger brother. Nothing else would explain why they both were so damn ecstatic to be able to plan something for it in the first place.

"Nothing too bad, obviously, but we definitely need to make it memorable," Judai mused, silence falling over the three for a minute or two as they thought, "Small but memorable..."

"...You know, now that I think about it... Yusei's hard to think of a present for," Jack mentioned, Crow nodding in agreement.

"I don't have to worry about that too much considering I'm going to bake the cake," Judai said, "but you do have a good point."

"This isn't something we're going to be able to think of in the thirty minutes before he gets back," Crow stated, moving Pharaoh's head for a moment so he could fish his phone out of his pocket, "I'll make a group chat - if we end up getting anyone else involved in this, we'll just add them to it as well."

They all shared a determined nod and sly smirks, knowing that even if it took them until the day of to do it, they'd come up with _something_ , and that it'd be damn good.


	185. Late Return

_**7/4/19**_

Yusei was _slightly_ (read: _extremely_ ) irritated with some of his co-workers, considering one of them had fucked up somehow and resulted in a confusing mess and panic that had ultimately amounted to nothing but wasted hours in the dead of the night.

It must have shown on his face because the second he came in the door and set down his keys, Judai was there and gently pulling him upstairs.

"Hey," Yusei greeted quietly, relaxing at the feel of the other's hand fiddling with his hair and pressing a quick kiss to his forehead in thanks.

"Welcome home," Judai smiled tiredly, though it looked just as bright as usual to Yusei despite that, "You look like hell, dear."

"Gee, _thanks_ ," Yusei replied, chuckling along with him for a moment before admitting, "I feel like it too."

It was almost one o'clock in the morning, which meant he'd stayed up waiting for him. His chest swelled with affection for the other as he slipped off his jacket and haphazardly tossed it on the chair once they reached their room, catching the pajamas and hoodie thrown at him afterwards and quickly going through the motions so they could get to sleep sooner.

He seriously wanted to forget that the last few hours had even happened in the first place. It was just so _ridiculous_ what'd happened, turning the one-hour meeting into a five-hour one through some ungodly combination of circumstances. It rankled at him just thinking about it, but he couldn't help it.

"You okay?" Judai asked when he came back in and huffed at his line of thought.

Yusei wasted no time in crawling in bed, hugging Judai tightly in his arms and burying his head into the other's neck, "Yeah. People are idiots, though."

"Major idiots," Judai agreed, managing to wrap his arms around him as well and letting out a content sigh that ruffled his hair, "When I got your text saying it'd be a lot longer for you to get back than you originally thought, I knew _something_ had to have happened."

"I don't even know why I had to get involved with it," Yusei complained, "It had barely had anything to do with me, the only part I had was that one of my research reports happened to be in the messed-up paper trail."

He felt odd complaining out loud like this since it was something he rarely, if ever, did - however, with Judai, it was something he felt comfortable doing, and he felt a lot better after mumbling out a rant into the other's neck for a few minutes. He wasn't sure it was even understandable at times, but Judai kept making little comments and hums to show he was paying attention, so he kept going until he finally ran out of things to say about it.

"Your co-workers seriously _suck_ ," Judai stated, silence falling for a moment before they both started laughing quietly.

"They're usually not that bad, but everything just seemed to go wrong at once," Yusei chuckled, chest feeling lighter and a relaxed smile falling easily into place, "Ah... sorry for dumping that all on you, by the way."

"Don't be - in fact, do it more," Judai encouraged, nudging his head with his cheek and placing a kiss on his temple, "I like listening to you complain like that, it means you're not just passively taking people's shit like you always seem to do."

"I'm too tired for you to suddenly decide to psychoanalyze me," Yusei snorted, lightly hitting his back with one hand, "You're too good at it, damn it."

Judai seemed to choke back a loud laugh at that, relenting, "Alright alright, but just to double-check - we're good to sleep in, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good. Love you, Yus."

 _Oh, that's a new one_ , Yusei thought to himself, smiling fondly upon hearing the words and curling further into Judai's warmth. One day he'd be able to think up something for Judai's name, but it was a little more difficult than just shortening it - it sounded weird to him to do that.

"Love you too."


	186. Nicknames

_**7/5/19**_

Yusei found himself stuck on his thought from the night before about nicknames, and he spent the entirety of the next morning staring at his boyfriend and trying to think up a good one. It was difficult to say the least, and he had a new appreciation for just how many Judai had managed to come up with for him because he couldn't even think of _one_.

Damn it, why couldn't he have had a name that could be shortened and still sound good? He loved Judai's name, don't get him wrong, it fit the man very, very well, but it did _not_ help at all in this instance.

"Uh... Yusei? Is everything okay?" Judai asked after happening to look up, noticing that he'd been silently staring. They were in the kitchen at the moment after breakfast, and Judai had somehow convinced him to let him wash the dishes that morning instead of Yusei, so he was sitting at the table and watching.

Yusei swore that he did _not_ pout in response, simply narrowing his eyes at him as he continued to stare. What could even be made into a nickname for him? Name shortening didn't work, he couldn't think of anything having to do with his abilities, and there weren't any incidents he could think of that would result in a lasting nickname - the fox thing didn't count, since it wasn't really a nickname in the first place and more-so just an observation.

Judai blinked when he didn't get a response, placing the last plate he'd been washing on the drying rack without even sparing it a glance and turning off the water, "Okay, I'll bite - what're you thinkin' about? I can't tell if you're mad at me or what with the face you're making."

"I'm not," Yusei sighed, resting his head in the palm of his hand as explained, "I just wanna know how you do it."

"Do what?"

"Come up with nicknames so easily."

A surprised look crossed his face for a moment before he smiled and laughed, leaning on the kitchen counter as he replied, "You like the ones I made for you?"

"I do," Yusei admitted easily, smiling affectionately upon hearing the other's laugh, "I just... can't come up with any for you though. It's bugging me."

"For me?" Judai questioned, humming and bringing a hand up to his chin in thought, "I dunno how to help you there. I'm used to ones that aren't very... nice, I guess you could say, like 'slacker' and 'drop-out boy'. Granted, those are from back in Duel Academy, but I haven't really gotten any since then so they're all I have to go off of."

Now he really needed to come up with a good nickname for him, because it would be a crime to let _those_ be the only things he knew as nicknames. It ruffled his feathers a little more than it usually would, too, since there was still some residual stress and irritation from the previous night, so he was even more determined to figure something out.

"I'll keep thinking, I guess," Yusei eventually said, standing up and, upon seeing the perfect opportunity thanks to where Judai was at the moment, walking over and using his height to effectively trap Judai against the counter along with his arms. He smirked at the slightly flustered look that crossed Judai's face, leaning down and smothering what he was about to say with a kiss.

 _Dammit, there's hair in the way_ , he thought, pulling back for a moment to brush it away gently and grinning at how Judai seemed to redden slightly at the soft touch against his lips. The messy hair admittedly added to the look, making him look like some sort of cute, fluffy...

... _Ah, there it is_ , Yusei realized, unashamedly ruining the moment with a shit-eating grin as he pulled back to _really_ look at all of Judai to confirm his thoughts. Judai gave him a very confused look, though from the curious look in his eyes he knew that he'd finally managed to think of something.

" _Stars_ ," Yusei breathed, biting back laughter as he continued, "You're my fluffy _Kuriboh_."

The utter look of horror Judai gave him was the last straw, and he broke down into laughter as Judai sputtered in embarrassment, vehemently trying to deny it, "I am _not_ a _Kuriboh_!"

"B-but your hair-"

"It does not!"

"And you're so cute like one-"

"That could literally be anything else! Why a Kuriboh?!"

It took a minute for Yusei to finally stop laughing and calm down, but when he did he pulled Judai into a hug, resting his head on top of his as he explained, "It's only partially because of your hair and how cute you are. The main reason is that when you think about it, your personality is a lot like one, too - you always try at least to find the best in situations and be happy, and you care a lot about others and are always willing to help me out, even when I don't ask you to."

"That... who thinks about _that_ when they think about Kuriboh's?" Judai asked incredulously, laughing into his chest in a slightly nervous way that told Yusei that he was embarrassed about what he'd said, "Besides, that could describe a lot of things, not just Kurbioh's."

"Yeah, but like I said, you look like a Kurbioh so I'm going with it," Yusei chuckled, ignoring the fist that hit his back in retaliation, "Aw come on, you're my fluffy Kuriboh. I like the nickname, don't you? My fluffy Kurbioh."

"...Damn you, you actually made me _like_ it with that little explanation of yours," Judai muttered, admitting defeat easily and looking up at him with reddened cheeks and eyes hidden behind messy bangs.

Ah, his cute, fluffy Kuriboh made his heart hurt with how much he loved him.


	187. Preparations

_**7/6/19**_

Yusei sighed to himself as he watched Judai tap away at his phone, looking entirely too pleased with himself and clearly planning something for the next day. It was apparently a good thing he'd prepared for this, having already put in a notice for work that he wouldn't be available that day (to his exasperation, the email he received in response was filled with early birthday wishes), because Judai didn't do things in halves.

He didn't say a word about it, though, and pretended he didn't see the varying levels of ecstatic looks all three of the others got on their faces whenever they glanced at him. It was nice to see everyone so... happy, and over something so simple, too.

As it was, though, he was pulling double-time today and cracking down on his work as his own birthday present to himself - not having to worry about it for a day or two was always a nice feeling, and he found his productivity boosted greatly in excitement.

For once in his life, he was actually excited for his birthday.

...Yusei entirely blamed Judai. It was his fault, and he loved him for it.

His phone ringing brought his attention away from his brief break of watching Judai, and he picked it up quickly upon seeing that it was the twins, saying, "Hello?"

"H-Hello," Luka greeted, Lua chiming in from the background with one as well, "Are you um, busy right now?"

Yusei glanced at his laptop, mentally going over his check-list of things he wanted to get done and deciding that he was at a good enough place to stop - it was five in the afternoon, and he'd been working literally all day, so there were only one or two minor things he hadn't managed to get to.

"Not anymore," Yusei replied, smiling when he heard Lua cheer and Luka sigh in relief.

"We may have ah... d-dropped a box full of little gadgets Lua's collected over time," Luka explained, sounding a little sheepish, "It all looks fixable, b-but we don't know how to do it. Would it be alright if you came over for a little bit? I-I know it's getting close to dinner and all, so it's okay if you can't."

"It's not a problem," Yusei decided, shrugging to himself and taking another glance at Judai, who was looking at him questioningly, "I'll be over soon."

"Thank you!" Lua said after stealing the phone from Luka, "We'll get it all as sorted as we can before you get here so it's faster, don't worry." With that he hung up the phone, and Yusei was left chuckling at the twins' shenanigans as usual.

"You going to the twins'?" Judai asked curiously, watching him as he stood up and stretched after quickly saving everything and shutting off his laptop, "What happened?"

"They need some help fixing stuff," Yusei explained, "Figured I should just go now - from the sound of it it's just a lot of small toys and other little things, so it shouldn't take very long. Maybe an hour or two, depending on how bad it is."

Suddenly a thought came to mind, and he paused as he eyed Judai suspiciously, looking for any hints that this was a set-up of some sort. He wouldn't be surprised if it was somehow, but Judai seemed to be genuinely confused beforehand about what was happening, so he didn't _think_ there was any plotting going on here. Then again, even if there was, he wasn't going to be able to do anything about it.

"Well, I'll make sure to save you dinner then," Judai smiled, standing up as well and following him over to the door where he tossed on his jacket and grabbed his keys, "Tell them I said 'Hi', okay?"

"Will do," Yusei agreed, pulling him close enough so that he could lean down and kiss him. He held Judai just tight enough to keep him in place, happy that the other got the hint and wrapped his arms around his neck to deepen it. They pulled apart after a minute or two, just barely enough so their lips were barely not touching, and they both grinned and laughed at the same time.

"I'll see you later, my cute Kuriboh," Yusei chuckled, pressing another quick kiss against his lips before fully pulling apart, "Love you."

"Love you too, you gearhead," Judai replied, smiling in embarrassment as he wasn't used to the nickname quite yet.

 _Just having Judai there is enough of a present_ , Yusei couldn't help think as he drove off, _though I am curious to see what they all came up with._

Hopefully it wasn't too big of anything, as he specifically remembered telling Judai not to do that after all. It was just a matter of seeing if the other remembered, though so far, in Yusei's experience with him, he had a pretty good track record when it came to taking everything into account, so he wasn't _too_ worried.


	188. Yusei's Birthday

_**7/7/19**_

Judai, of course, was the first one to tell him happy birthday. It was a quiet, half-awake mumble, but it was still the first thing Yusei heard the morning of, which made him quite happy.

"Thanks," Yusei chuckled sleepily, readjusting his hold on Judai before burying his head back into the pillows next to the other's, "Now back to sleeping, I don't want to wake up yet."

They dozed blissfully for another hour or so before they couldn't do it any longer, eyes meeting as they grinned at each other happily.

"Mornin'," Judai greeted. Yusei was quick to steal a morning kiss from him, in the process wiping off the foxy grin the other was wearing and replacing it with a more relaxed smile.

"Good morning," Yusei replied, sitting up and stretching out his arms and back with a yawn. Judai did the same a few moments later; Yusei let out a huff when he flopped onto him right afterwards, latching him in a hug.

"Happy Birthday," Judai hummed into his arm, a lot more coherently than he had previously.

"Thank you," Yusei chuckled again, highly amused when Judai continued to repeat himself.

"Happy Birthday~"

"Thanks..."

"Happy Birthday!"

"Thanks...?"

"You're handsome," Judai stated, looking up at him with a silly grin that made him laugh at the ridiculousness.

"So're you," Yusei teased, "but you're more cute than handsome, Kurbioh."

Judai let out a fake gasp, holding a hand to his heart in mock offense, "How could you say such a thing? Clearly I am a much more handsome Kuriboh... the most handsome one to ever live!"

They both laughed at that, the joking being the last thing they needed to fully wake up in the end. Yusei slipped out of bed afterwards, turning to face Judai with a smile.

"So, should I be worried about anything, or...?"

"I dunno, what time is it?" Judai asked, glancing at the clock and shrugging, "Nine? Eh... let's take a shower now, we've got time."

Yusei didn't even bother to ask to what they had time before, because he knew Judai wouldn't tell him. He'd just have to wait until after they'd finished getting ready to see - which, of course, would probably be a while because Judai had suggested that they _both_ should go take one now.

Hey, he wasn't about to complain about it, especially since he didn't have a problem using the fact it was his birthday to make Judai do whatever he wanted. He completely blamed Judai for his being okay with this, what with all the passes and games he'd come up with for them.

* * *

An hour and a half later, Yusei walked out the door only to find the entire bottom floor of the apartment filled with duel monsters and decorations that were clearly handmade, alongside all of the Signers, together.

"Happy Birthday!" They all cheered, Winged Kuriboh and Junk Synchron floating around in the air and blowing on blowout noisemakers. Yusei couldn't help but laugh at the fact everyone (save for Jack, of course) was wearing the tiniest party hats he'd ever seen, and he was quick to make his way down the stairs, holding Judai's hand and tugging him along behind him.

"Thanks guys," Yusei said, genuinely happy to see everyone gathered in one place again, "I- Did you take time off work? Wait, Akiza, Luka, Lua - aren't you skipping class right now?!"

"One day won't hurt," Akiza shrugged with a grin that told him there was no fighting with her judgement, the twins agreeing with her enthusiastically.

"I cleared out my schedule for today," Crow answered, gesturing at Jack and continuing, "and he hasn't missed a single day of work since starting, so he's still got all his sick days to burn through."

"We all figured that the best present we could probably give you was a day where everyone was together again," Judai chimed in, squeezing his hand with a smile and a look that was so... soft and loving that it made Yusei's heart hurt, "Of course, we all got you presents that you get to open after you eat, but this is the main attraction."

"You're ridiculously difficult to find a present for," Jack huffed, though he was grinning as he said it, "Is this why you never let us do anything for you before to celebrate? Were you saving us the headache of finding something to give you?"

Yusei laughed at that, everyone else following in suit before he finally said, "Alright, I don't know about you guys, but I could go for some food right now."

"Ah yes, my wonderful creation shall finally see the light of day," Judai hummed, leading the way towards the kitchen and pulling out a large, glazed fruit tart from the fridge.

Yusei caught a glimpse of what he could only assume was a cake as well before the refrigerator door was shut, blinking in confusion as to how in the world Judai had found the time to make these things without him knowing. He only left the apartment once in the last few days, and that was... last night, to go to the twins'.

 _Damn_ , he thought, thoroughly impressed at this point even knowing now that it _had_ been a set-up like he'd suspected. Judai was not only a very fast baker, but he had a _damn_ good poker face when he really tried - he'd been totally fooled by how genuine his cluelessness had seemed in reaction to everything, and he honestly couldn't be happier about it.

He'd be remembering this birthday for a while, that's for sure.


	189. Flying Details

_**7/8/19**_

"You still tired from yesterday?" Judai asked, watching as Yusei yawned in front of his desktop - it was an actual, full computer he was using this time because of some tests he had to run, and Judai had spent the morning learning about the different parts and how they worked while Yusei put it together. He'd been curious, and it wasn't like Yusei didn't have the time for it, nor did he _not_ want to (in fact, he was quite happy about the interest Judai showed), so an impromptu lesson was underwent.

"A little bit," Yusei answered, glancing over at him with a small smile, "It was a lot of fun, though."

Judai felt immense pride at that, even if it was probably the tenth time he'd heard it from the other - it'd been a small stroke of genius to have everyone's duel monsters materialized to help set up the birthday celebration, and he'd made sure to sound-proof their room with shadows the second he woke up so that none of the noises from downstairs would travel up and give away what they were doing. It not only ensured that they could surprise Yusei, but that the amount of people would still be ultimately small - duel monsters wouldn't really count in the final number because they didn't affect Yusei the same way another human would.

In other words, it's _way_ easier to interact with a duel monster than a human - it was a concept that Judai understood very, very well, and when he'd remembered it just in time to come up with a plan, he'd nearly cheered out-loud in happiness at having figured something so good out.

Speaking of duel monsters, though... Judai had promised Yusei he'd bring him flying. He'd thought about maybe using that as a present, to be honest, but then immediately thought better of it because it was something he'd already promised to do beforehand; using it as a present would feel... cheap and a little rude in his opinion.

"Hey, Yusei," Judai started, getting the other's attention again after a few seconds of typing to finish a line of code, "You feel like flying tonight? The weather's supposed to be pretty nice, it shouldn't be muggy at all."

Yusei tilted his head cutely in confusion for about half a second before his eyes lit up in remembrance, "Oh, that's right. You _did_ say you'd bring me flying." He thought for a few seconds before finally replying, "Sounds good to me, it's a date then."

"A date in the sky, huh?" Judai wondered, chuckling as he thought about it, "Hey wait a minute, I'm going to be doing all the work here! I better be gettin' lots of love up there while I'm carrying you, got it?"

Yusei rolled his eyes with an amused grin, laughing, "Only if I'm not already too busy clinging to you and fearing for my life."

"Nah, you wouldn't," Judai replied, nodding to himself and completely confident in his answer as he teased, "Unless you're _not_ as much of a daredevil as you claim to be? You never did _prove_ that to me like you said you would."

"Ah, so you're pulling that card," Yusei mused, turning back to his computer after flashing a quick smirk at him, "I'll find a way, don't worry about that one. For now though, figure out where you want to go do this, since I'm assuming you don't want to just fly off the roof of this building."

He wasn't wrong, of course - the building was surrounded by city buildings and witnesses, considering their placement not quite at the edge of the city but a bit more inwards, so Judai needed to find a place where they could take off and not be seen immediately. Preferably a park or something that had trees or other such things that would obscure view of them long enough that if someone were to actually see them, they'd already be too far up for that person to make out any defining details at all.

Then again, if worse came to worse, Judai could just hold up a layer of shadows underneath them to blend them into the night. It'd be at the cost of blocking some of their view of the city and land below, but at least it was a sure-fire success plan if all else seemed to fail.

For now though, it was time to research parks and the outskirts of the city to see if Judai could avoid having to do that - saving energy and making the experience the best it could possibly be for Yusei were his main goals, and he set off on his task with determination.


	190. Wings

_**7/9/19**_

Judai eventually found a place he thought would work well, as well as a second and third one just in case it didn't - he was pretty sure it'd work out just fine, though, and he wasn't very worried about it at all. Yusei double-checked his directions after dinner, inputting the addresses into his phone in case they needed to pull them up quickly.

"We should walk there," Judai suggested, pointing at the map location while they sat on the couch and waited for the sun to fully set, "Way less of a chance that someone will see us if we do."

"I was about to suggest that," Yusei replied, pecking him on the cheek with a small smile, "Guess we're on the same page, here."

"I think we're both just good at keeping ourselves hidden when we want to be," Judai chuckled, earning a snort from the other before he let out a yelp at being dragged down into Yusei's lap.

"Take a nap or something, we've got another hour at least thanks to the summer time," Yusei said, not letting him go when he struggled halfheartedly to get back up.

Judai rolled his eyes at the satisfied smirk he saw when he relented and stretched out his legs on the couch, grabbing onto the arm in front of him and hugging it. He wasn't tired in the slightest, but he wasn't going to complain about this, especially since Yusei was quick to start playing with his hair with the single free hand he had.

Soon enough it was dark enough for their liking, and after some quick goodbyes to Crow and Jack, they walked hand-in-hand down the lit-up streets to the park Judai had picked out. There were lots of people milling about still, but they stuck towards the edges of the sidewalks and cut through alleyways, which let them stay out of sight for the most part. The park was empty when they got to it as well, by some stroke of luck, so they ended up not having to check out the other possible places as well.

"Alright, stand back a little bit," Judai stated once they were safely hidden by a plethora of surrounding trees and shadows, "It's been a little while since I last did this, so hopefully wings are the only things that come out and not the claws as well. I might accidentally shove too much power into it and the last thing I want to do is accidentally stab you with knife fingers."

Yusei nodded, heeded his warning easily as he walked a few feet away in front of him, though not without wondering, "Do you need to take off your jacket and shirt or anything? Wouldn't the wings tear right through it?"

"Nah, that's the great thing about these," Judai grinned, pausing for a moment for dramatic effect before channeling Yubel's powers and letting the wings fold out elegantly behind him, "Clothes go right through them, it's as if they don't exist to each other. It's physical in most other ways, though." Luckily no claws appeared as well, though Judai could feel them wanting to - he'd put just a bit too much into the transformation, it seemed, though as long as he kept pushing any excess energy from this to his wings he shouldn't sprout anymore modified body parts.

Yusei marveled at the sight of them, coming back to his side almost instantly after he gave him the 'okay' to come back and asking, "I can touch them, right?"

"Go ahead," Judai replied, slowly spreading the wing closest to Yusei out so he could feel along all of it. It was a nice feeling to have his wings touched like that and he hummed a pleased noise as Yusei took his time to fully observe both of his wings.

"Spread them out fully, I want to see what your full wing span looks like," Yusei said, stepping back a few steps so he could see all of it.

Judai did so, highly amused by how Yusei had slipped back into research mode and was starting to be slightly demanding as he usually did in that mindset. He chuckled at how cute the other's reaction to seeing his wings spread out fully looked, especially when he flapped them hard once and startled him slightly, which jolted him out of his thoughts.

"Cute, gearhead," Judai grinned, walking up to him and interrupting whatever Yusei was about to respond with by sweeping him off his feet bridal style. He relished the the flustered, wide-eyed look Yusei gave him in the moment as he scrambled to wrap his arms around his neck for balance, smiling down at him cheekily and continuing, "We came out here to fly, yeah? So let's fly."


	191. High in the Sky

_**7/10/19**_

Yusei gripped onto Judai for dear life, barely being given a second's warning before the other shot up into the sky with a single strong push of his wings. The cold air rushed past them, though they both had the foresight to wear thicker jackets so they wouldn't freeze - even if it was summer and it was warm, it wasn't going to be when they were actively flying around and high up in the air.

At least he'd retained his dignity somewhat and hadn't yelped too loudly in surprise when Judai swept him up off his feet, even if his face was burning in embarrassment. He'd instinctively buried his face into Judai's shoulder when he took off, too, so the cool air couldn't even reach his face to cool it off.

"Scared?" Judai teased, tightening his grip on him and keeping that way, which slowly made Yusei able to relax his own arms from around the other's neck.

"Not at all," Yusei replied, feeling adrenaline start to pump through him as he shook off his embarrassment in favor of pulling away to get a look at their surroundings, "Excited, actually."

"You sure you're not an adrenaline junkie?" Judai laughed, leaning back slightly as he idly flapped his wings in a hover.

"Might be," Yusei breathed, breath taken away by the sight of all the city lights and the realization of just how high up Judai had managed to take them in the span of a few seconds. It was something he hadn't been able to appreciate before when he was too busy trying not to die; it looked beautiful, and when combined with all the different sensations he was getting from the wind and Judai's warmth, it made for a very unique feel that he decided he very much liked.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Judai murmured, Yusei nodding and humming softly in agreement. Silence fell over them for little bit as they took the time to truly drink in everything the view had to offer. At some point Yusei let his head fall back on Judai's shoulder as he continued to stare out peacefully, smiling happily when Judai placed a kiss on his forehead.

"Hey, think you could take a picture of this?" Yusei asked, tilting his head up and blinking when he noticed the light glow to Judai's eyes, the same color as Yubel's - how hadn't he noticed that before? Surely they would've been glowing this whole time since he'd summoned his wings out...

Oh, right, he was much more focused on the huge, very real wings on his boyfriend that made him look like a sexy devil or something along those lines - all he needed was some horns and a pointed tail to complete the look. It simply wasn't fair how Judai could go all the way from ridiculously cute to ridiculously handsome and cool in the span of two seconds, even during the times where he wasn't transformed like this.

"I figured you might want one," Judai chuckled, a shadowy tendril revealing a certain stolen camera from Jack's room, "so I made sure to bring this."

Yusei smiled in appreciation, saying, "Thanks. I just thought it'd be nice for my laptop as a background... seems like it'd be calming or something along those lines, plus it's a really nice memory at that point."

"A really nice memory, huh?" Judai mused, glancing down at him with a mischievous look that made him raise his eyebrows at him in confusion, "How about this, then?"

Yusei barely caught a glimpse of the camera being moved away before Judai was leaning down and catching his lips with his. He blinked questioningly but went along with it after a second, letting his eyes close as he readjusted his arms around his neck and leaned up into the kiss, which was turning out to be slow and sweet.

They slowly pulled apart, Yusei feeling vaguely like his breath had been stolen away as he rested his head on Judai's shoulder again while the other smiled softly down at him. Maybe... was it the high altitude? He _was_ breathing pretty heavily, now that he was paying attention to it, and the altitude difference was the only reason he could think of for the difference.

"Ah, here we go," Judai said, redirecting his attention back to him from his breathing. He was grinning at the camera being held up in front of him, which Yusei glanced over at before he felt his face heat up slightly thanks to what was shown on the display.

It was them kissing in the middle of the air with the city lights down below in the background; as Judai unashamedly scrolled through the pictures, he saw both close-ups of them and far-away shots where they were simply dark silhouettes against the bright, colorful lights below.

Either way, looking at them made him feel oddly... shy, he supposed, sheerly due to the practically tangible intimacy they gave off. He'd seen themselves kiss in the mirror numerous times, mainly whenever Judai decided he felt like trapping him against their bathroom sink, but it wasn't the same as having the moment eternalized like this and put right in front of him for his viewing pleasure.

Ultimately, though, he decided that he liked the pictures. He really liked that they both looked so happy with each other, and the whole aesthetic with the lights and the shape Judai's wings added to their silhouette was nice to look at.

"Good idea," Yusei eventually said, laughing at the comical sigh of relief Judai gave at the praise.

"Oh good, you went silent for a little while there and I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing with this," Judai explained, putting the camera safely away again before starting to move around in the air, "Now then, let's explore a little!"

"Do some tricks," Yusei replied cheekily, narrowing his eyes at him in challenge when Judai raised an eyebrow down at him, "What? This is fun, plus you're way too good to _drop_ me."

"... _Definitely_ an adrenaline junkie."

"Shh, that's a well-kept secret, my cute Winged Kuriboh."

"Goddammit Yusei-"

"You have _wings_ right now, so you're my _Winged_ Kuriboh, don't even try to tell me you're not."


	192. Winding Down

_**7/11/19**_

Judai was, admittedly, a little bit worried about actually _dropping_ Yusei, but after a couple of tumbles and tosses in the air, he got into the swing of things and just made sure to keep focus.

And gods, was he glad he hadn't chickened out of going along with Yusei's request, because he was getting to see a side of Yusei he hadn't gotten to see before. The other's hair was totally messed up from the wind and tumbling upside-down in the air, and he was loudly laughing with the most vibrant, bright smile on his face. He was oozing excitement and whenever Judai got a good look at his eyes in between throws, he saw slightly blown pupils and pretty sparkles thanks to the reflection of the city lights below.

It was impossible not to get caught up in such feelings as well, especially when it was _Yusei_ , his normally calm and collected boyfriend. They spent a solid hour just goofing off in the sky together, not caring about anything else and just forgetting everything else while they had fun. Eventually though, during one of the times that Judai was holding onto Yusei's hand and swinging him back and forth while the other laughed happily and leaned into the motions, he realized that the other's grip was starting to slack ever-so-slightly and that his hands were _very_ cold.

"Alright, one last toss up and then we should call it a night," Judai stated, swinging the other up back into a solid hold and feeling how shaky he was in his arms - if he hadn't been convinced before that Yusei was an adrenaline junkie, then he _definitely_ was now. At least it had the effect of making him a very happy person, because it made having to stress and worry about about, y'know, _throwing his beloved up in the air while they were already ridiculously high up_ have an end goal that was worth it.

"Already?" Yusei complained, unashamedly glaring at him with the cutest pout and very furrowed brows.

"It's been an hour and you're really cold, dear."

Yusei blinked in confusion, clearly focusing on how his body was feeling for a few seconds before smiling sheepishly up at him, "Oops? I hadn't even noticed..."

"Adrenaline junkie."

"Shut up and throw me one last time, damn it."

Judai snorted but did so, letting go of his legs so he could swing him by the arm for a little for momentum before finally throwing him above him. Yusei let out a loud whoop of excitement, coming down a few seconds later and laughing with a wide grin after Judai'd safely caught him again.

"Alright, I'm good now," Yusei said, curling up into him while he re-found the park they'd started at below and started descending, "You're really warm, how are you still so warm? I'm absolutely freezing, now that you've brought my attention to it."

"I live to be your personal heater, obviously," Judai teased, thinking of all the mornings and nights where Yusei would latch onto him and not let go, often times mumbling something about how warm he was under his breath. He was way too much like a cat in that regard, which only made him more curious about how he'd act when Judai finally got around to paying another visit to the Aromages' shop and got that transformation potion.

He landed softly on the ground, letting his wings fade out after he did so. He gave a sigh at the feeling, only now noticing the strain on his back where they'd been - he'd forgotten about how it worked muscles in his back that weren't used to being used like that. He was going to be sore tomorrow, since for whatever reason the ache from flying took longer to go away than other types of strain.

Now that he thought about it, he was pretty glad he wasn't Yusei right now - the other's arms were going to be really sore for a few days thanks to how much he'd swung by them and had them pulled harshly on. He winced just thinking about it and made a mental note to double-check their stock of painkillers the next morning.

He set Yusei down on his feet, or at least, tried to do so - the other almost immediately stumbled upon trying to stand on his own two feet, too shaky from the adrenaline and off-kilter after getting used to having nothing under him to be able to do so.

"Maybe we went a little overboard," Judai mused, catching him easily and pulling him back into his chest, "I'll just have to carry you home, I guess."

"T-thanks," Yusei stuttered, his soft laughter as Judai pulled him up on his back and grabbed his legs sounding like music to his ears, "I haven't felt a rush like that in a while, that was fun... even if we _did_ go a little bit overboard. My bad."

"At least we know for next time, though. Thirty minutes is probably a good amount of time for this," Judai replied, smiling to himself when he felt Yusei kiss behind his ear after wrapping his arms around him for balance.

"So we are doing it again?" Yusei asked hopefully, sounding vaguely relieved and relaxing against his back as he started the trek back home.

"Of course we are, that's not even a question - that was fun, plus I think that's the loudest I've ever heard you be. You've got a cute happy laugh, y'know?"

He chuckled when Yusei buried his face into his neck, sure that if he were to turn his head and look, he'd see cheeks that were flushed from both the cold and embarrassment.


	193. Fair Planning

**_7/12/19_**

Luckily for both of them, one of the body washes they'd gotten from the Aromages had been enchanted to have additional healing properties that would speed up the body's healing process while easing some pain in the moment. They worked like a charm, and after a few days both of them were no longer sore in their arms or back.

"Guess we can give it a good review next time we see them," Judai stated, popping the wash back into its designated place in the storage closet - it was something to use sparingly, after all, as there was no point in using it when they weren't injured in some way.

"I'm just glad I can lift my arms above my head again," Yusei sighed, making Judai chuckle at the memory of the morning right after their flying adventure. Yusei had physically been unable to lift his arms up past his shoulders, which made for a very interesting day and a half where Judai had to keep helping him do things around the apartment; his work was done on the tablet, which slowed down his efficiency but allowed him to be able to at least get _something_ done as he couldn't lift his arms to use his laptop, and he ended up drinking a lot more than he ate during that time period. Eating was a massive hassle when one could shove only shove food into their mouths at the cost of their muscles locking up and complaining with sharp bouts of pain.

It was pretty amusing to Judai when Yusei couldn't exactly hug him either and grumbled under his breath about it while Judai took advantage of having no resistance in the slightest to cuddling all day. All Yusei could do was roll with having an attachment to him, arms wrapped around his upper half, and do his best to work with the tablet in the meantime.

"I don't suppose now would be a good time to bring up that fair idea again, would it?" Judai asked, re-joining Yusei on the bed and bringing a hand up to play with the other's wet hair - he'd just taken a shower, which was why the wash was getting put away in the first place. Already the signature spikes were starting to puff back up into place, which was slightly disappointing since Judai liked being able to see Yusei with his hair completely down - it was rare and it made him look so different from how he usually did, even if nothing else was changed about him.

"That's right, you wanted to go to one," Yusei remembered, eyes closing as Judai started threading his fingers through his hair, "Now's a good time, now that our arms _aren't_ dead and we can actually play the games at one."

"True!" Judai laughed, "So we're still good for it? I was thinking sometime next week, it's up to you though when exactly."

Yusei hummed in thought for a few moments before replying, "I can take an off day in a few days or so, I'm not sure how much I need to get done exactly because there's been some stuff going on with the management... is that okay?"

"Sounds good to me, don't worry about it" Judai smiled, untangling his hand from his hair and quickly wiping the droplets of water off so he could hold the other's hands instead, "That's the middle of the week, too, so it'll be less crowded, which is always a plus nowadays."

"No kidding," Yusei agreed, sharing a laugh and a smile with him before squeezing his hands lightly, "Alright, then if we're going to go out soon I should probably go pull out the laptop and get to it. I'm already starting late today, thanks to a certain someone."

Judai rolled his eyes playfully, moving their hands out of the way so he could flop all of his weight onto Yusei in retaliation, "You like these slow mornings as much as I do. Who was it that pulled me back to bed this morning and whined about it being too cold?"

"Shush, can you really blame me? You're a living heater, remember?"


	194. Recommendations

**_7/13/19_**

"You guys are going to a fair?" Jack asked, evidently overhearing Judai complain about trying to find a good one, "It's not exactly a fair, but the amusement park at the docks is... decent. If you go at a certain time of the week it's got pop-up shops, so it's close enough."

Both Judai and Yusei shared an incredulous look across the room upon hearing this, having the same thought almost simultaneously.

"Jack, you've been to an amusement park?" Judai questioned, raising an eyebrow at him in disbelief, "I did _not_ think that would be your kind of shtick."

"It's not," Jack replied, looking away from them, "I was dragged to it against my will, and it ended up being only slightly horrible instead of utter trash like I expected it to be."

"Uh... huh. I see?" Judai frowned, trying to think of a reason for Jack of all people to go to an amusement park. It definitely didn't seem like his type of place considering all the games and rides, which meant there was some other reason he liked it.

Yusei was the one who came up with it first, stating, "So Carly dragged you there?"

Honestly, Judai felt a little bit embarrassed that he hadn't come up with that immediately. He blamed the increasingly hot weather for frying his brain and making him slow on the uptake for these kinds of things.

"Multiple times," Jack grudgingly admitted, turning on his heel and quickly making his way up to his room, "I don't want to hear it, just figured I'd help. Night, thanks for the food."

"No problem, g'night!" Judai shouted back right before the door closed, blinking at it for a moment before turning and giving Yusei a grin, "Well, that makes life easier. I'll see what days those pop-up shops are there and we'll go on one of them, it can't be bad if _Jack_ of all people is recommending it."

"I'm still trying to process the fact that Carly has managed to convince him to go to an amusement park, _multiple times_ ," Yusei said.

Judai laughed at the thought, pulling out his phone and sending off a quick text to Carly to both get the story of how that had happened and what the name of the place was so he could look it up, "I'll ask her, it sounds like a good story. Plus, I'm too lazy to go hunting for the place on the map so I'll just ask her for the name of the place while I'm at it."

"Couldn't you just look up 'amusement park at dock' and find it almost immediately?" Yusei chuckled, clearly amused by his sudden laziness, "Surely there aren't that many that fit the criteria given."

"More than one is too many, Yusei," Judai sighed dramatically, yawning afterwards and flopping back on the couch. If he wasn't careful he'd fall asleep there at this rate, the warm temperature of the apartment being just the right amount to make him tired thanks to the fans blowing in the corners.

"If you want you can go get ready for bed," Yusei mentioned, a soft smile gracing his lips when Judai looked over after opening his eyes again, "I'll be done in a bit, I just want to finish this one thing so I can save it."

"Okay," Judai agreed, forcing himself to get up from the comfortable couch and stretch, "A shower sounds good, now that I think about it. It's too hot now, the weather's too muggy for my liking."

Yusei tilted his head in thought, so Judai waited patiently for him to finish thinking, walking over and brushing some hair out of his face with a tired smile and giving him a quick kiss, being careful not to touch his glasses and leave a smudge on accident. He'd gotten much better at it after a couple weeks, but in the beginning Yusei had started keeping a little microfiber wipe around since he was bad about not touching the lenses with his nose whenever he kissed him.

"See if you can find a day where it's cooler to go on," Yusei eventually said, "I'd rather prioritize that over going on a day with the shops just to make it more like a fair. Either way I get to go with you and that's all I really care about."

Yusei always seemed to know just the words to say to make his heart hurt in fondness, feeling touched by the words, and Judai loved that about him alongside all the other things.


	195. At the Docks

**_7/14/19_**

They elected to walk there when the day Judai picked out finally came, seeing as the weather was cool enough to do so and they were leaving earlier in the morning so they could get there right when it opened. Plus, Yusei had had flashbacks to when he went to the arcade with Haou and ended up with huge plush toys that wouldn't have gotten back had they driven there; since they were bound to play carnival games and win, considering he fully expected Judai to cheat at one or two if something ended up catching his eye, he wanted to avoid having any issues with getting things back home.

"It's as beautiful as ever," Judai mused once they got to the docks, stopping for a moment to lean on the wooden fence and stare out at the ocean, "The breeze is really swaying my opinion right now, though. I haven't felt this cool while being outside in _days_."

Yusei laughed in agreement, "That's the summer for you. Maybe we need to get you down here a couple times a week or something, it's always going to be colder here thanks to the water."

"I wouldn't mind taking walks with you down here at all," Judai said, turning to him with a little grin and threading their hands back together, "Means you're taking a break _and_ I'm getting to cool off, it's a two-in-one deal!"

"I'm a lot better now," Yusei huffed, rolling his eyes in amusement and letting himself get pulled along towards the entrance of the park.

"You are," Judai admitted, "but it's always going to stick as somethin' to tease you with, along with the ramen, that phobia of bugs you have-"

"I get it, Kuriboh."

"You're cute when you're in denial."

"I never denied anything though? All of those are true..."

Judai just smirked at him, clearly amused by his slight annoyance and confusion, "You're in denial about just how embarrassed the things I listed make you."

"Hey, my fear of bugs is very justified and I'm not embarrassed about it at all," Yusei defended, giving him an affronted look at being accused of such a thing. He _might_ be able to see it with the other two things ('might' being the keyword, he liked to think he wasn't too embarrassed by his previous bad habits), but definitely not with his aversion to creepy, crawly, _awful_ insects. They were dirty, they had far too many legs, made shivers go up his spine just hearing about them, and he knew far too many facts about how dangerous they could get in the right circumstances.

He did _not_ like insects and he would defend his position until the end of time itself.

"Ah... right, sorry," Judai sheepishly said, tugging him a little closer so he could lean up and peck his cheek, "I should know that after what happened with the prank I tried to pull... I still feel bad about that."

Yusei winced just thinking about the incident - Judai had put a few fake cockroaches around the apartment, successfully convincing him that they'd actually infiltrated the place. Unfortunately, this also came with the consequence of Yusei quickly and efficiently getting the hell out of there, barely listening to Judai trying to tell him it was a prank. Once everything was cleared up, Yusei _still_ hadn't been able to feel comfortable in the apartment until he'd gone through every little nook and cranny with cleaner and spray, then getting a new mattress when he remembered bed bugs existed and that he hadn't switched out the mattress since he'd gotten the place; he couldn't be sure just how many years old the thing was, so it got replaced and he was finally able to sleep again after two days of paranoia.

Needless to say, Judai swore up and down that he'd never do something like that again, would never doubt his fear of bugs, and then sucked up to him big time for about a week afterwards to make it up to him.

"At least you made up for it and won't do it again," Yusei sighed, smiling easily and untangling their hands so he could pull him into his side instead, "Anyway... you got the tickets, right?"

"Yup! Ordering online is neat!" Judai chirped, digging the folded print-outs out of the side pocket of the bag he was carrying, "Definitely beats having to wait in line, I'm used to having to do that 'cause I obviously didn't have access to a printer while I was travelling."

"You never just snuck in?" Yusei blinked, raising an eyebrow at him, "Seems like a double-standard to be fine with border-hopping yet not be fine sneaking into an amusement park."

"It feels morally wrong to sneak into an amusement park. It does _not_ feel morally wrong to border-hop," Judai stated, looking up at him with his own questioning face, "Come on Yusei, if I'd expect anyone to understand, it's you."

"True," Yusei chuckled, placing a kiss on his forehead before letting his arm fall off the other's shoulders so they could hold hands again, "Now come on, what's the first thing you want to do once we get inside?"

"Rides, right now is the least crowded it will be the whole day," Judai immediately answered, a bright grin on his face as they finally reached the entrance, "And I wanna see you on an adrenaline high again."

"Rides it is, then" Yusei said, finally realizing what he was in for when it came thanks to what Judai had said.

This was going to a lot more fun than he initially thought it would be.


	196. Cotton Candy

_**7/15/19**_

"Okay, I think I'm done for now," Judai stated a couple hours later, laughing as they got off one of the rides that dropped you from really high-up, "Plus the lines are starting to get longer and I'd rather not have to wait."

"Fine with me," Yusei replied, grabbing their bag from the sidelines for him and exiting with him. He'd had a smile stuck on his face since the first ride, adrenaline clearly kicking in and doing its thing, which Judai found adorable beyond belief - not even one of the rides, one of which ended up with Judai squishing Yusei against a wall most of the time thanks to how fast it was spinning (he wouldn't be surprised if the poor guy's hip was bruised or something later), made that cheery grin fade away, and they'd gone on nearly all of them.

He was saving the best for last after all - the Ferris Wheel would get to wait for either evening or when they left, whichever came first. Judai was very determined to pull off that cliche kiss at the top, and nothing was going to stop him from getting it.

"You hungry?" Judai asked, holding his hand as they started wandering out of the rides part of the park, "Because I am, and something smells really good."

"A little bit," Yusei answered, "Not overly, though."

"Split something then? I just want a snack for now, too."

Yusei hummed in agreement, prompting a short search for something that'd work for both of them. Judai spotted the candy-specific stall first, and almost immediately upon seeing the decoration knew what he wanted.

"We're not riding anymore rides for a while, right? So cotton candy and slushies aren't going to kill our stomachs," Judai questioned, turning to Yusei with a grin.

Yusei chuckled at his enthusiasm, saying, "I'm fine with that. The only time I've cotton candy was the last time the twins dragged everyone to the movies... and that was just a little bit to try it."

"Well, at least this time you've had it before," Judai sighed dramatically, smiling to himself at successfully making Yusei laugh in return, "Bubblegum or Blue Raspber- wait never mind, they have a mixed one, that works."

Soon enough they'd gotten the bag of cotton candy, opting to just get water for now in case it was too much sugar at once for them to handle; after finding a free bench for themselves, Judai popped it open, slightly giddy when he stuck his hand it and pulled off a fluffy piece of pink - he hadn't had it in a while either, so he was technically right alongside Yusei in that department.

"Sugary goodness," Judai hummed happily, feeling the sugar melt on his tongue. Yusei moving caught his attention for a moment, though, and he found himself watching intently as the other tugged off a glove so they wouldn't get covered in sticky sugar. Something about the movement was captivating, and his face heated up lightly a few seconds later when he realized he'd been staring between his now-free hand and the glove that'd been placed to the side.

A quick glance up revealed that Yusei had clearly noticed, seeing as he was giving him a light smirk and a silent, raised eyebrow, which made him feel infinitely more embarrassed.

To cover it up, he shoved the bag in between them with a slight glare, stating, "Not a word."

Yusei complied, but the smirk became significantly more toothy as a result alongside an amused glint entering his eyes. Judai pouted slightly as he resigned himself to the teasing before an idea hit him, shoving a hand in the bag to tear off another piece when Yusei took too long to do so.

"Say 'Ahh'," Judai snickered, holding it up in front of the others mouth and highly amused by the way Yusei's eyes crossed to look at it, looking a bit embarrassed himself this time.

And yet, he still complied, even throwing in the little sound effect and everything. It was far too cute and Judai half-wished they weren't in public so he could take the teasing a few steps further like he usually did.

"You like it?" Judai asked, finally letting his smirk fall into a much calmer smile.

"It's sweet," Yusei smiled back, both of them laughing at such an obvious answer before continuing, "It's good, I like it. Don't think I could eat too much of at one time, though."

"Well, that's why we're splitting it," Judai shrugged, scooting closer to him and holding the bag in the middle so they both could access it easily, "I don't think I could either, to be honest. Anyway, here - try just letting it melt on your tongue, it's fun."

"Out of curiosity, how is this stuff made?" Yusei blinked, doing as Judai said and putting a nicely-sized chunk of blue fluff this time on his tongue, tilting his head while he waited for it to dissolve, "How does the sugar go from granules to... this stuff?"

Ah, now that was something Judai _did_ know, mainly because he'd actually looked it up after managing to work at one of the parks for a couple days and manning a cotton candy stall. If there was one thing that could get him to read nowadays, it was food and how to make it.

And so he explained it while they ate, though they went off topic rather quickly when Yusei decided to get Judai back for earlier and suddenly poked some fluff onto his lips before he knew what was happening.

Thank the gods he'd had the foresight to bring wet-wipes, something Judai had gotten accustomed to carrying around whenever he was travelling thanks to their extreme convenience and usefulness, or else their mouths would've both been stained blue and sticky from the cotton candy that got accidentally smeared in the process.


	197. Fair Shopping

_**7/16/19**_

After finishing the cotton candy and cleaning up a bit, they decided to wander through the pop-up shops in the main square area of the park. Judai had managed to find a day where they were up _and_ it wouldn't be too hot after all, so they got to go in the end. There were a couple little knick-knacks here and there, but nothing overly interesting beyond one shop full of little tools and other useful things.

Peeling Yusei away from that one was very, very difficult because he just couldn't decide what he wanted. Ultimately, Judai ended up just piling up everything he'd wanted, paying for it with an exasperated grin before Yusei could protest too much.

"You didn't have to buy it all..." Yusei mumbled as they walked away, though he had a small smile on his face so Judai knew he was happy about it.

"If I didn't do that we'd have been there all day," Judai teased, putting away the small bag of tools in the backpack, "Besides, some of those looked useful - I threw in an extra one that I thought would be interesting for some art stuff."

"Well, they were multipurpose," Yusei replied with a shrug, taking his hand again now that it was available. There wasn't too much of the shops left to look at, so they took their time going from booth to booth so it'd last longer.

Towards the end, a booth finally caught Judai's eye - it had shelves of different wallets, all with duel monster prints or patterns. There were some bags too, but what Judai was more focused on was the wallets.

"Y'know, I never thought about it before, but I don't have a wallet, do I?" Judai realized, glancing over all the different options, "I never bothered to get one and just shoved everything into my bag or pockets before, but... now that I'm settled down I probably should get one."

Yusei hummed in agreement, squeezing his hand for a moment and giving him an oddly happy smile that he couldn't quite decipher the reason for - was it something he said? Well, whatever the reason, at least he was happy about it.

Some of the duel monster ones were cool, but what eventually stood out to him was a small little wallet with a standard galaxy print on it. The colors were pretty and popped while not obscuring the stars in the pattern, and it was just the perfect size for him to carry around; there was a little add-on tab in the middle of it for a picture as well when you opened it, which he really liked the idea of having.

"You like that one?" Yusei asked curiously, studying it himself for a few moments before continuing, "It's well-made and the material is good, so it'll last you a long time."

"Yeah, I'm gonna get this one - I like it a lot," Judai said, waving the shop's watcher over so he could pay for it. With his brand-new wallet in hand they wandered out of the shopping area, with Yusei handing things over to Judai to put in his wallet while they walked.

"ID here, coins in the outside pocket... oh, you want me to put the extra cash in? 'Kay, I can do that," Judai said, putting everything in the appropriate parts before looking over it appreciatively, tossing it back and forth in his hands and opening it a few times, "Now I just need a picture and it'll be perfect. Maybe the flying one?"

"When you figure out which one, just tell me and I'll send the file to you so you can print it at the print shop," Yusei stated, to Judai's delight looking a little embarrassed at being reminded of those specific pictures. He didn't object to it though, so Judai could put them on the list of potential wallet pictures.

Judai hummed as he put the wallet away, glancing around at the park and asking, "Well, now that we're done with that, what do you want to do now? We could go on more rides, or play some of the carnival games... though to be honest, we might want to wait on those until the end so we don't have to carry anything around. We're obviously going to win on the ones that aren't rigged through the system itself."

"Wait, which ones are rigged like that?" Yusei blinked in confusion, "I mean, obviously they all are in some way, but there's ones where it's impossible to win?"

"Yeah, it's mainly just the squirt-gun ones though," Judai explained, "They can literally choose a person to win and flip a switch so they do. Not all places do it, but a lot do so they can squeeze money out of people - I remember when I figured that one out when I had a short stint at one of these places. All of the large groups of friends that would play suddenly made sense because then it didn't really matter who won - they'd get the largest prize by default due to the amount of people playing, plus they usually had a set person to give it to."

"...I'm suddenly glad we don't have to play that one to win any of those things," Yusei chuckled, pulling Judai into his side and placing a quick kiss on his head, "The only thing I have to worry about now is you winning so many that we can't carry them back."

"Hey! I wouldn't do that, besides there's not too many I want anyway!" Judai protested with a grin, laughing when Yusei ruffled his hair in response.

"So you _did_ see one that you wanted."

"...Maybe."

"At least tell me they're not all stuffed animals and duel monsters, we're going to run out of places to put them if we keep going at this rate."

Judai looked away with a sheepish grin, laughing at the exasperated, fond sigh Yusei gave him before helping when he suddenly got a knuckle dug into the top of his head.


	198. Carnival Games

_**7/17/19**_

"Ah, there it is!" Judai chirped, pulling Yusei along towards the game booth. It was the only one he'd seen with this particular prize he wanted, which was a Junk Synchron plush to go with the Winged Kuriboh one. If he had his little buddy's plush, then he wanted it to have Yusei's right next to it as well - they were their main low-level duel spirits, after all, and they played together all the time.

Luckily it was just one of the bottle toss games where you had to knock the pile over by aiming correctly - Judai had very good aim and, even if he were to miss the sweet spot somehow, a quick nudge with a shadow on the table would knock over whatever didn't fall.

"Oh, I see," Yusei said, able to determine what he wanted from his first look over the prizes available, "That's... bigger than he actually is. Ironically, I think Synchron would love it."

Judai excitedly nodded in agreement, "Yeah! Plus, it can go right next to the Winged Kuriboh, then we can move Stardust to like... our room or something."

"This is _exactly_ what I was talking about earlier, y'know," Yusei mentioned, giving him an amused look, "We're going to run out of space."

Judai smiled sheepishly but non-apologetically - he thought they made fantastic decorations and pillows, after all, and if worse came to worse they could always put in a few shelves on the walls to put them on. He wasn't too worried about it though considering the only other duel monsters he could think of that he'd want a plush of were a few of his HERO's and Yubel, which he doubted he'd be able to find any time soon.

" _Please do_ _ **not**_ _get a_ _ **plush**_ _of me of all things_ ," Yubel stated, sighing in exasperation in his mind, " _A little key-chain? Fine. Sticker or something like that? Fine. But a_ _ **plush toy**_ _?_ "

 _Hey, if I see one and it's good, can you blame me?_ Judai retorted, making sure they felt just how unashamed he was about this.

" _ **Yes**_ _."_

With a happy hum, Judai finished paying for the chance and tossed his ball up in the air a few times, studying the pile of fake milk bottles carefully before glancing over at Yusei and gesturing for him to stand back a little. Once he did so, he pulled back and threw it carefully at just the right point, a little bit below the center-point considering the ball was actually big enough to hit all three at once, and watched with satisfaction as all off the bottles fell down.

"Nice," Yusei complimented, making him grin happily in return.

Now armed with a large Junk Synchron in his arms, they couldn't exactly hold hands anymore, but neither of them minded and merely walked shoulder-to-shoulder to the next game Judai had in mind - the shooting one, where you had to fully shoot out the star on a piece of paper in order to win. This one also had the real prize that Judai was aiming for, which was a fancy new duel disk with all the upgrades that his didn't have.

He really liked his old one and it worked just fine, but after a little bit of studying the inside of it Yusei had determined that he'd have to completely redo the wiring and programming on it to get it up to par with the modern ones, which utilized a little bit of the momentum powering the city when it was available. He didn't want to make the other do that, even though he'd said he'd be happy to spend the time doing so, so this was a good solution to it.

"You want another duel disk?" Yusei asked questioningly, looking over at him with a slight frown, "Are you sure? I know you like how yours looks, and I said I'd be happy to upgrade it."

"I know, but... I kinda want a new one anyway," Judai admitted, burying his face a bit into the stuffed toy in his arms, "That thing's got a lot of old memories and stuff attached to it and... I want one for the new ones, y'know? Does that- Does that make sense?"

Yusei blinked at him, something like wonder crossing through his eyes before he gave Judai a fond smile that made him feel better about his decision, "It does, don't worry. While I'm getting it for you, you decide which one you want - don't worry about the colors or anything since we can repaint it later, just look at the models and figure out which one you like."

"Oka- wait, what?" Judai replied, cutting himself off with a blink as he realized what Yusei had said, "You want to play this one?"

The little, confident smirk he got in return made his heart skip a beat as Yusei said, "I've got a bit of experience with this, I'll be just fine."

Judai watched in amazement as two minutes later, Yusei perfectly managed to cut out the star with well placed shots around it that ended up cutting it out in one piece. He _knew_ the gun was rigged to be a bit inaccurate too, and that it took some serious skill to be able to cut off any part of the paper after the first half of the available shots due to the lack of tension in the paper, which made it even more amazing to see happen.

"So, since when have you been good with guns?" Judai asked after they'd gotten the duel disk he'd picked out - it was a round version like his old one, but the part that extended out was a little more decorated than his old ones with a few patterns cut out above the card slots. He was probably going to re-paint it in red and black since he still wanted red, but not white because that would remind him too much of his old one.

"Since I was forced into learning by a friend that's in the police force - he wanted to make sure that if I ever got dragged into another dangerous situation that I knew how to use all sorts of them well. He's a bit... eccentric when it comes to me, I suppose. I'll tell you about that later, it's a long story," Yusei explained, a self-satisfied smile still on his face, "Anyway, want to go get actual food now? It's almost four and we still haven't had anything but cotton candy."

"Is it really almost four? Damn," Judai mused, feeling how hungry he actually was now that it'd been brought up, "Alright, sounds like a plan."

 _And then afterwards, the Ferris Wheel_ , he thought, getting giddy at the thought. Maybe he was a bit too excited for something so cliche, but damn it, he was absolutely _sure_ Yusei would get embarrassed by it and he wanted to see that.


	199. Ferris Wheel

_**7/18/19**_

The time had come, and Judai was absolutely beaming in excitement as they waited in the line. They'd ran back to the shop area for an hour or two and found a nice reusable bag they liked that they could shove all their stuff into so it was easier to haul around, which then resulted in discovering that they had actually missed a section of booths and consequently more wandering around to take in everything.

But now, with the sun half-way set in the horizon, it was time to ride the Ferris Wheel.

"You like Ferris Wheels that much?" Yusei asked amusedly, raising an eyebrow at his behavior, "I'd have thought it would be boring compared to... y'know, being in the air."

 _Ah, it's cute how mindful he is of being in public_ , Judai thought, noticing that the other had avoiding saying that he could fly. He himself had mentioned it earlier when he was talking about wallet pictures, but with that particular context he supposed it would be hard to tell he was talking about actually flying with wings or anything like that.

"True, but I have my reasons," Judai replied, his grin feeling like it was permanently stuck on his face. He'd been thinking about this moment for almost a month now and hyped himself up for it, he had to make sure it went just as well as he hoped it would.

The line was decently long, but they'd managed to snag a place in line before the crowd really began to hit so they were ushered into one of the cabins soon enough. The bags got dumped on the seat across from them before they settled in on the other side, the ride starting to move again soon afterwards before stopping again to let more people on and off.

"Pretty view," Yusei commented, looking out at the horizon with a tiny smile on his face. The orange from the sunset settled in like a halo around him, to Judai's delight, since Yusei was the one on the side of where the sun was setting.

"You're prettier," Judai replied easily, drinking in the other's startled glance back at him and the way his now-pink cheeks looked with the sun hitting the edges of them the way it was. He threaded their hands together and leaned on Yusei's shoulder, noting that they'd gone about half-way up so far - it was taking a while because they kept stopping to swap people out.

It actually ended up working in his favor, though, as it meant that when they got to the very top they'd inevitably stop.

"See, this is why I like Ferris Wheels," Judai said quietly, tilting his head up towards him and smiling, "The atmosphere's nice, isn't it?"

Yusei took a few moments to respond, studying him with a still slightly flustered look before he nodded in agreement, "It is."

 _Almost there_ , Judai thought, taking a quick glance at the horizon to check, _and... stop._

And it stopped.

 _Perfect._

He pulled himself up quickly, straddling Yusei's lap with thankfully enough space on the seats for him to balance and not fall backwards; before the other could get out a word, he leaned in and kissed him, sweet without being too hard or too soft. Yusei kissed back immediately, wrapping his arms around his waist and eagerly responding when Judai deepened it more.

It didn't last too long considering the circumstances, but when they pulled apart both of them were sporting flushed faces, foreheads still pressed lightly together as they let the moment drag out longer.

"I love you," Judai whispered, hands gripping tighter on the front of Yusei's shirt as he memorized how the other's face looked with the sun highlighting it and the cabin in the background.

"And I love you," Yusei murmured, seemingly doing the same with him.

The moment was broken when the Ferris Wheel started moving again with a slight jerk, Judai only not falling backwards thanks to Yusei's grip on his waist. They shared a look before they started laughing, untangling themselves so Judai could sit back down next to Yusei.

"That-" Judai started, letting out another small laugh as he hugged Yusei's arm impulsively, "That was _exactly_ how I hoped it'd be."

"I knew you were planning something," Yusei admitted, chuckling and kissing the top of his head before teasing, "I should've known by now that you're a hopeless romantic at heart."

Judai let out a content sigh in response, completely unfazed by the comment since it was something he'd accepted only a few days after they'd gotten together, "I am. Isn't this a great way to end the day?"

"It is," Yusei hummed, "though I think the best way we could end the day is with a nice, _long_ shower."

Judai snickered in agreement, "Oh yeah, we've both been sweating to death even with the cooler weather. Together?"

"Of course."

"Such a quick response. Have I finally convinced you of how great it is to shower together all the time?"

"...Perhaps. Just... please don't suddenly turn the water cold again, it was _freezing_."

Oh dear, now Judai _had_ to do it - it was practically a requirement at this point, after all.


	200. Getting Results

_**7/19/19**_

Judai's phone started buzzing constantly, causing him to blink in confusion as it moved on the table and didn't show any signs of stopping. Someone was spamming him with messages, it seemed, which made him wonder why they weren't simply calling him.

His question was very quickly answered the second he unlocked him phone and saw where they were being posted, though.

 _ **Thunder:**_ _I FUCKING DID IT GUYS_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _I DID IT_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _IT WAS DUSTY AND RUN-DOWN AND EXACTLY WHAT I EXPECTED IT TO BE LIKE_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _BUT_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _I DID IT_

 ** _Phoenix:_** _shit already? dammit i was almost there, tell me was it at least interesting?_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _as interesting as a bunch of ojamas and huts can be, at least i couldnt smell anything_

Judai read over the messages, grinning maniacally at thought of them succeeding in doing that thing he'd requested of them after that tournament in April. It'd been worth the wait, and to be honest, he was amazed that one of them had even succeeded in that short of a time.

He'd expected it to take at least six months, if not a year, but here they were - only three months later and they had results.

 _ **HERO:**_ _ive been there before it actually smells nice believe it or not_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _how the fuck do they manage that? they're in the middle of fucking nowhere and youre telling me they dont smell disgusting?_

 _ **Phoenix:**_ _now that i think about it... i kinda pity you for having ojama village as your part of the spirit dimension you can get to_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _rightfully so, dammit you have your stupid city and shit_

 _ **HERO:**_ _at least ojama village is peaceful, theres shit tons of illegal stuff happening with the destiny heroes all the time_

There was an incident Judai couldn't help but laugh at every time he remembered it - he and his HERO's had all decided to visit the Destiny HERO's at one point (they'd been invited so it wasn't like it was unexpected) and it had ended up with them busting a huge illegal drug ring and dismantling a cult... in the span of ten minutes after arriving.

At least his Elemental HERO's had time off, Destiny HERO's were always after something and as a result had become a bit... eccentric when it came to fighting. At least it meant there was always an exciting moment whenever they visited.

Either way, Judai was ecstatic that Jun had finally managed to visit his main spirit's home. He'd known of a way to do it after helping out a teen once who'd told him about it as thanks, which involved visiting in spirit, but not body, and generally in one's sleep. It took quite a bit of time to achieve, though, and he'd never actually asked anyone to try doing it before, so he hadn't known exactly how long it'd take for one of them to get it. Thus, he turned to them when the opportunity arose, partially to satisfy his own curiosity and partially so he could confirm a way for people to connect more with their duel spirits if they could.

He knew they would both be able to, considering their connection to their duel spirits was incredibly strong compared to the average person who could see them, but actually utilizing that connection to visit the other world was like having to go through physical therapy for a long forgotten about limb that you could barely feel. In other words, it was difficult and required a lot of slow steps to get to the end.

 _ **HERO:**_ _when you can, write up as much as you can remember about the feeling and stats about how long you were there, how far you could go, all that kind of stuff_

 _ **HERO:**_ _need as much data as possible so i can possibly get someone else to replicate it, but even faster_

 _ **Phoenix:**_ _yknow, i can really see the influence yusei has had on you, its kinda hilarious_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _thats what i was thinking_

 _ **Thunder:**_ _'stats', 'data', i dont think ive ever heard those words come out of this idiots mouth_

Judai rolled his eyes at the teasing, getting up to go get a new notebook for this now that there was actually results to write about; he stopped when he came out of his room a minute later, leaning on the railing and smiling down at where Yusei was completely engrossed his his work, a bunch of little things scattered around on his desk and wired together in a mess he couldn't really understand.

This was his main reason for being so excited, if he were to be honest with himself. He wanted to give Yusei that ability to hang-out with his duel spirits in their home, which he'd been looking into a bit and narrowed down a few possible locations of thanks to Junk Synchron's eagerness to help when he secretly pulled him aside and told him what he was doing. Apparently it actually existed as a field spell, which was to be expected as most archetypes like this had at least one, but Yusei... didn't have it.

According to Synchron, one had been printed, but only that one and it was actually stuck in the place itself. Starlight Junktion was a unique card thanks to that, and they both agreed that Yusei should get it - the only issue there was that, since it was stuck in the spirit realm and using the 'dream' method of going there, as Judai had started to dub it, wouldn't allow Yusei to bring back the card since it was only his spirit going there. In theory, he might be able to considering he was a King of Games and therefore had a core that might allow him to drag a card back to this world if he had enough duel energy, but it was too unlikely to happen.

Thus, Judai had to figure out where the place was and go get it himself. Junk Synchron was simply ecstatic when he said he would do so, even saying that it might be possible for Yusei to travel there using the card since he could materialize duel monsters.

Which, of course, stunned Judai because he'd never thought of using field spells the same way one used spells and duel monsters. He'd tried it immediately after and sure enough, opened a portal using Skyscraper.

" _I can't believe we've seriously never thought of this before_ ," Yubel had groaned, all three of them feeling slightly dumb now that they knew about it. It just seemed so _obvious_ now that field spells would do something as well if they had duel energy or the Gentle Darkness shoved into them the same way.

He'd have to tell Aki later, maybe as a farewell present when she left for college. She'd passed her tests and gotten into a medical school in another country, which meant she'd be leaving in a couple months for it - it'd probably be great to be able to have a place to go unwind and talk with her monsters, considering how stressful her life was about to get with all that studying.

For now though, he had notes to take and a technique to try and streamline... after getting Yusei another cup of tea, though, since he noticed he was out and had been for quite a while. It was summer, he needed to stay hydrated and getting lost in his work was not helping his precious gearhead in that regard.


	201. Favorite Foods

_**7/20/19**_

Yusei was interrupted during his work by a certain cat sitting on his mouse hand, letting out a low meow and staring at him.

"Hello," Yusei greeted, raising an eyebrow at the cat with an amused quirk of the lips as he took his hand back and pet him on the head, "And what do you want?"

Pharaoh meowed at him again, nudging his hand with his nose and turning his head towards the kitchen before meowing even more.

Was he hungry? What time was it even...?

With a blink Yusei checked the clock after adjusting his glasses - seven o'clock at night, which also happened to be an hour past Pharaoh's usual dinner time. If no one had fed him yet, then it made sense for him to be complaining to someone.

Usually that person was Judai though, which prompted him to look over and see what he was up to. He wasn't expecting to find him hunched over a notebook, which looked relatively new, biting his thumb with a concentrated frown and twirling his pencil in his other hand. Generally, Judai didn't get that deep into whatever he worked on unless it was important to him, so Yusei could see why Pharaoh had bothered him instead of Judai.

"Alright, let's get you some food then," Yusei murmured, quietly getting up and going to the kitchen so as to not accidentally disturb the other's concentration. He'd have to ask him about what he was working on later, but for now he didn't want to disrupt his thought process - he knew very well just how important it was to have time to think things through and just... work, with no outside distractions.

With that thought, he decided that he'd make dinner for both him and Judai tonight, not just Pharaoh's, because he hadn't done it by himself in a while and he figured it'd be nice for Judai. He might as well call it a night for working too, since he was already starting to feel a little tired now that he'd been dragged away from his laptop and energy readers by Pharaoh and he knew that in an hour or two he'd really start to feel it set in.

"Here you go," Yusei smiled, putting Pharaoh's food bowl on the floor and taking a moment to watch the fluff ball happily eat before getting to work on his own meal. He wasn't entirely sure what to make at first, so he settled on filling the rice cooker while he thought about it.

 _Maybe... no, not feeling it right now_ , he thought to himself. Judai spoiling him with high-quality foods had led to him developing an actual taste for food, and he'd started to get used to the feeling of not wanting certain ones at certain times, unlike before where even a hint of such a feeling was usually shoved aside in favor of getting some form of sustenance in his stomach.

When he'd noticed and mentioned it to Judai, the other had made a surprised look before a very prideful, self-satisfied grin formed on his face, which Yusei was just going to assume was a good sign.

The sight of the cabinet holding all the more unique cooking utensils gave him his answer though, and a quick check of the fridge confirmed that he did indeed have all the stuff needed for for what he had in mind, so he got to work preparing it.

About thirty minutes later, the smell must've finally wafted out of the kitchen (or he'd been too loud, which was very much a possibility considering what he was making) because Judai wandered in with a pleasantly surprised look on his face.

"Are you making dinner?" he asked, blinking at him and the basket in front of him, "Wait... what are you making? That's the compact fryer."

Yusei couldn't help the slight smirk his grin turned into when he replied, "I've been practicing making fried shrimp whenever you left to go work at whatever thing Phoenix scheduled for you that day."

"Wait, really?!" Judai exclaimed, eyes practically sparkling as he ran over with a silly grin, "Oh my gods, it _is_ ebi fry! How did you know?! You wouldn't have practiced if you didn't know it was my favorite!"

"Remember when you could talk to Pharaoh thanks to the potion? You mentioned it then," Yusei replied, satisfaction filling his chest at the way Judai gaped at him in return before hugging him.

"That was _one_ time, and you remembered it?" Judai wondered, pulling him down for a moment for a kiss before letting him go back to watching the food, "What did I do to deserve you?"

"That's what I should be asking," Yusei mused, determining that it was almost done and turning to Judai with a smile, "Can you get a plate please? I made just enough for both of us, so we can just put it on one and split it."

Judai's happy aura as he stuffed his face and praised his cooking made all the pain of going through how to learn the fryer worth it. Yusei was _never_ going to tell him about how he'd accidentally given himself a small burn thanks to the oil the very first time he tried to use it, or how he'd burned the first two batches he ever made somehow. The stupid fryer just hadn't wanted to work with him, but he'd figured it out eventually at least.

The things he went through to surprise his boyfriend... he wouldn't have it any other way.


	202. Nightmares

_**7/21/19**_

Judai blinked his eyes open blearily, noting that it was still dark in the room and therefore still nighttime. Something had to have woken him up though, considering he tended to sleep a bit deeper nowadays than he used to before when he was travelling, mainly because he felt pretty damn safe here (Yusei was safety and warmth and everything he needed to actually feel comfortable).

A quick glance up answered his question - Yusei was sitting up with a wince on his face, the expression one that Judai was intimately familiar with.

"Nightmare?" Judai asked quietly, sitting up with a yawn and scooting closer to the other so he could wrap himself around him again.

"Yeah... sorry for waking you up," Yusei mumbled, leaning into his touch the second he hugged him. His breathing was a little ragged and Judai could feel Yusei's heart beating a bit too fast as he started to calm down.

"Don't worry about it, I'd rather be up for you anyways," Judai replied. He knew how awful nightmares could be, so he pulled him a bit closer, prompting the other wordlessly to hug him in a tight bear hug. He adjusted his arms so he could reach up and thread his fingers through his hair soothingly, lightly placing kisses on his neck, "Wanna talk about it?"

"I don't remember what it was about," Yusei sighed, un-tensing quickly thanks to his ministrations.

"Well that's good, at least you won't be stuck thinking about it later," Judai said, getting a small laugh from Yusei like he'd hoped he would.

"That's true," Yusei mused, pulling back for a moment and lightly bringing a hand up to brush his hair out of his face, "Gotta look on the bright side of these things, right?"

Judai hummed in agreement, moving up a little and kissing him briefly before suggesting, "Want some tea? It's like... one in the morning and we're going to need something to get back to sleep at this point. And it's helped me before whenever I couldn't sleep, so..."

"Why not?" Yusei smiled, chuckling quietly when Judai let out another yawn, "Though I think you'd have no problem either way."

Judai rolled his eyes but didn't correct him on one point - he wouldn't be able to sleep until he was sure that Yusei was feeling okay and could go back to sleep himself.

They quietly made their way downstairs, making sure they didn't accidentally wake up the other two in the apartment, before picking out a tea meant for relaxing and taking the paper tags off the bags so they could just dump it in two of the travel mugs and leave it to steep in the hot water. It didn't take very long for the water to heat up, as they weren't aiming for boiling hot water, and they were back in bed soon enough.

"Wasn't there something about not using electronics when you're trying to sleep?" Judai mused, leaning his head on Yusei's arm and watching while the other looked up random videos to watch while they waited for their tea to finish steeping.

"Is there? I'd believe it if there was," Yusei replied, opening another tab and searching up the question quickly, reading over the top few info boxes that popped up in the results.

"Blue light strikes again, it seems," Judai laughed, looking up at him after seeing the answer, "Maybe that's why you were always able to pull all-nighter's before, even when you weren't working specifically with a computer."

"Wearing those glasses with the blue light filter probably fixed that issue, too," Yusei stated, "It's been what, a month, right? Almost two months? That's plenty of time to readjust to it."

"...Should we really be using the laptop right now then? We're trying to go back to sleep."

"...Probably not, but I'd rather just relax and watch videos with you right now than worry about that."

"Sounds like a plan to me. You gonna skip working today?"

Yusei pondered the question for a moment before leaning down and pecking him on the forehead, replying, "Yeah, that sounds nice."

Judai beamed up at him with a happy grin, glad that the other was going to take a break for a day, especially after having bad enough of a nightmare to wake up in a cold sweat. He hoped this was the first time it'd happened while they'd been together, because he'd just feel bad if he'd slept through Yusei waking up and looking as shaken up as he had that night.

Gods knew it was only a matter of time before he had one of those nights as well, after all. Judai was honestly surprised he hadn't had one bad enough to wake up in the middle of night since they'd gotten together, and he couldn't decide if he'd rather have Yusei keep sleeping or get woken up by him on accident when it happened.

Cuddles and kisses would be very much welcomed though, which answered his question easily enough.


	203. Poncho

_**7/22/19**_

A crash from upstairs caught both Judai and Yusei's attention, sharing a look with each other in confusion before hearing the telltale sounds of Winged Kuriboh and Junk Synchron talking. They'd materialized them for a bit so they could play while they worked and they must've wandered upstairs without them realizing it.

A couple seconds later, a quick glance into their room, whose door was the only one open at the moment, revealed a couple fallen boxes in the open closet and a sheepish pair of duel monsters.

"Sorry about that," Synchron said, looking over the scattered items and smiling, "At least it wasn't anything breakable, right?"

Winged Kuriboh perked up at that, flapping around in the air in agreement before moving to help the other clean up the mess properly. He still looked pretty happy, even though Judai could see one of his wings moving a bit slower than the other, which was throwing off his balance and flying power ever-so-slightly.

"Don't worry about this, we'll clean it up," Judai sighed, giving the two a smile before waving them out, "Why don't you go play with Pharaoh? He just got back from one of his daily exploration trips."

"Okay! Thank you, sorry again!" Synchron chirped, immediately fleeing the scene with the flying ball of fluff. Both Judai and Yusei couldn't help but chuckle at their duel monsters' enthusiasm.

Looking over the strewn items, Judai had one particular one catch his eye - it was a brown poncho, with red accents that were the same icon as what was on half of Yusei's shirts. Other than the icon, it certainly didn't seem like something Yusei would wear, let alone own in the first place, which made him insanely curious as to why it was there.

"Hey, Yusei, what's this from?" he asked, holding up the poncho for the other to see.

Yusei glanced over and upon seeing what it was, immediately lit up in recognition, "Oh, that's from Crash Town. It's a couple hours out from the ctiy and is pretty barren of things like trees. I had to fit in with everyone else there at the time, so they gave me it to wear."

"Is it Wild West themed or something?" Judai wondered, studying the poncho for a few moments before shrugging and pulling it over his head to wear - it was really big on him, as expected, but it was also comfortable and looked cool.

"Yup, here, hold on - I know it was in the same box as this..." Yusei replied, sorting through the items on the floor for a minute before grinning in success, "Here we go! This is the duel disk that goes with it, they surprisingly let me keep this as well."

"That's a duel disk?!" Judai gaped, not expecting Yusei to pull a pistol out from underneath the pile of stuff on the floor. He watched Yusei spin the pistol on his finger like it was the easiest thing in the world to do, thoroughly impressed by the act because he knew it was hard to get that spin down to such a level. Eventually Yusei stopped, pointing quickly at the wall and pressing the trigger, which caused the gun to suddenly fan outwards into a duel disk that was ready to be worn.

"That is _so_ cool, let me see that!" Judai said enthusiastically, taking note of how Yusei managed to turn it back into a gun before also spinning it on his own fingers. He posed, left hand holding the gun out and the other arm forming finger pistols as he pursed his lips and winked at the other, "How do I look? Pretty badass, right?"

Yusei hummed in both agreement and amusement, standing up from the floor and making his way over to him, "More cute than anything else... did you wanna see me in it? Last time I wore this the only thing I got to see myself in was dust and the foggy grime covering the mirrors at the time."

"Of course I do," Judai grinned, tugging the poncho off quickly after handing Yusei the gun to hold on to. He slipped it over the other's head for him instead of making him have to put down the gun again, shifting it around so the logo was in the front in the right place.

When Judai pulled back to look at the results, he couldn't look away - Yusei looked so much more like a badass in it than he ever could pull off. The stoic face, the way the fabric hung off of him and the arm he was holding the gun in... it all added up into one cool image that Judai _needed_ a picture of. This had to be his phone background now no matter what.

"Doesn't look bad," Yusei mused, having immediately shuffled away to look at himself in the mirror.

"You were right - I do look cute more than anything else when it's being compared to _this_ ," Judai emphasized, gesturing towards Yusei and pulling out his phone, "Do a cool pose, please? I really want a picture of you in this, you look so freakin' cool in it."

"...How's this?" Yusei replied, taking the same pose Judai had earlier after a moment's hesitation except with a far cooler look on his face. He had a small smirk on though, which had the added effect of being enough to fluster Judai as he snapped a couple photos quickly, doing his best not to look too affected by it.

Yusei let his arms fall back down once he'd finished, giving off a sigh before tugging the poncho off, "It's way too hot for this right now, sorry. I'd gladly wear it longer for you otherwise."

"Nah, you're right, I wouldn't want you to overheat," Judai said, changing his phone background successfully and nodding in satisfaction at his handiwork. His attention was brought upwards though when Yusei strode over and gave him that same small smirk; he couldn't hide his embarrassment this time, not when he was pushing him back towards the bed and effectively trapping him between his arms, which only made his face heat up more.

"You seem to like it a lot when I'm dressed up in any way for you," Yusei mused, tilting his head slightly down at him with a strangely predatory gleam in his eyes that made him feel a little small, but in all the good ways, "If I get these types of reactions, it's more than worth taking the time to humor you. Besides, I've started to think up some things for you to wear in return so you can look forward to that."

Judai was going to comment and ask what he was planning, but he found that the words didn't want to come out when he tried, so he let it go and instead forgot about everything else for a bit besides Yusei's mouth on his.


	204. More Info Acquired

_**7/23/19**_

"I still can't believe Jun managed to do it before me," Edo grumbled, looking out over the party he'd helped coordinate.

Judai laughed next to him, enjoying being up on the third floor balcony and just glad to be out of the hot, stuffy kitchen. Since the hosts had opted to go with serving a sit-down dinner before the rest of their activities began, everyone in the kitchen only had to last through that and cleaning up before they were allowed to go. Of course, this meant he could finally get some info from Edo face-to-face about his favor.

"You said you were finally able to do it the other day, right?" Judai asked, taking another bite off the meat skewer in his hand - there'd been untouched leftovers, as always, so he figured he might as well eat some now while they were still warm. The rest of them got packed up and stored in a bag to take back with him.

He really wanted to see Yusei's reaction to the stir fry, because that particular dish was _hot_. Judai still couldn't believe the hosts had wanted a meal with _ghost peppers_ in it somehow - at least he was able to get away with minimizing how much needed to be used so everyone's taste buds didn't get fried.

"Yeah, I was - it was cool to actually explore the city where they live, though I'm pretty sure they avoided taking me to the shadier parts for now," Edo replied, a small smile coming to mind at the memory, "I do remember what you said about illegal activity and it already seemed pretty wild from the three hours I was there."

"You'll get to have your fun soon enough," Judai shrugged, dodging the light punch at his arm with a grin, "What? I know you, you're gonna have a blast with it - running around, catching baddies."

Edo sighed, rolling his eyes before suddenly smirking, "Well, at least it's not Ojama Village. Thunder's sent angry rants in the group chat for the past few days about their _everything_ there."

Judai snorted, a wide smile forming on his face as he responded, "Oh gods, that's been _hilarious_. And I know exactly what he's talking about every time, too, which makes it even _more_ hilarious. They certainly live interesting lives in that place."

"Either way... based off what it was like, I'd say the only thing that could speed up the process would be finding some sort of way to strengthen the bond between the person and at least one of their duel monsters," Edo stated, already knowing where the conversation was heading, "I started to fade if I wandered too far from my HERO's, so the reason this whole thing works in the first place is most likely due to that connection."

"Well, that's already better than everything Thunder's come up with so far, so thanks," Judai said, tearing off the last chunk of meat from the skewer before skillfully flicking the stick into the trashcan right below them on the first floor, "I should probably get going now though, I told Yusei I'd be back in time for a late dinner."

"He been using those parts he conned out of us well?" Edo asked, standing up from leaning on the railing and stretching his arms out.

"I assume so," Judai replied, shrugging lightly before continuing, "He practically gushed over those parts when they finally arrived, so I take that as a definite 'yes'."

"One of them technically isn't released to the public yet."

"Ah, that explains it perfectly."

"You planning on telling him about the dream trick thing?" Edo questioned, giving Judai an exasperated look, "You really need to come up with a name for it, we can't just keep calling it 'dream something' whenever we talk about it."

"Yeah yeah, I got it. And yes, of course I'm going to tell him - I just wanted to see if I could streamline the process first so it was faster," Judai huffed, getting a chuckle from Edo in return.

"Alright, I won't keep you lovebirds away for any longer then," Edo teased, waving him off, "Have a nice night, thanks for the help as always."

"Night!" Judai waved, turning around to start his trek back home. It wasn't too far away and easily within walking distance, which was fantastic and meant that the food would probably still be slightly warm by the time he got back.

Thirty minutes later, he watched in complete awe as Yusei downed the ghost pepper stir fry like it was nothing, only drinking a bit of milk twice while he was eating.

"How in the world are your taste buds not dead?!"

"Judai, the spice _is_ the taste."

"Okay, then how is your mouth not _absolutely burning_?!"

"It's a good burn."

Judai gave him an incredulous look, but at least he got to laugh at the other when his glasses started fogging up because his face was so hot from eating the food. He snuck a picture of it, of course, because without context it just looked like he was flustered beyond belief and that was _adorable_.


	205. Venturing Off

_**7/24/19**_

Judai'd finally narrowed the location of Starlight Junktion down to a single place. It was in a dimension he'd spent quite a bit of time in actually, just in a very hidden section that he guessed was hidden from the other residents of the spirit world as well - it was locked away behind a bunch of machinery and secret button panels, which made him wonder what'd happened during its creation in the first place.

Every spirit dimension and world had a story behind it, after all. Little bits of history would be scattered around every single location, but it was difficult to string together. Daitokuji had been extremely good at finding all the parts and pieces and putting the story together when they'd been travelling, and it was always interesting to learn about the different turf wars and disputes that'd happened. Plus, it usually helped them figure out why certain groups of duel monsters interacted with each other in odd ways.

Either way, Junk Synchron had whispered the new info to him the next morning, sounding extremely proud of what he, Quillbolt, and Sonic Chick had managed to do - they'd managed to find the exit along the dome the hidden city was in and reverse the path out, finding all the hidden buttons and panels. It'd taken them a solid day and a half, almost two days, but they were a determined little bunch and succeeded, even drawing up a map he could follow if need be.

"Yusei!" Judai exclaimed, catching the other's attention from where he was re-wiring some of his machines to prep for what he was working on that day, "I'm taking a trip to the spirit realm today, okay?"

"Okay," Yusei blinked, giving him a curious look as he put down the cords in his hands so he could join him, "Are you going to see the Aromages?"

"I'm planning on stopping there at some point, but I also need to check on a few places," Judai replied, not lying about that - he'd been putting off some routine checks he usually did on a few specific locations in the spirit realm, making sure that Darkness and the Light of Destruction hadn't tried putting their mitts on anything, so he was going to do that before making his way to Starlight Junktion, "Did you want anything in particular from there?"

"If you're able to, could you get more of the body wash with healing properties?" Yusei asked, smiling as he stopped in front of him and brushed some of Judai's hair away from his face, "It'd be good to keep a stock of it, just in case... actually, I recall there being soap like that too - that'd probably be better to get."

"I'll see what I can do," Judai said, reaching up with one hand and threading their fingers together, "I don't know how long it'll take, so I might not be back in time for dinner."

Yusei hummed, smile turning slightly softer as he nodded, "Alright. We've still got lots of leftovers thanks to all the food you brought back last night, so we'll be just fine if you aren't." He tilted his head a bit, eyes studying his face with a slightly more serious look, "You're checking on those places for corruption, right? Stay safe."

Judai chuckled lightly, letting his head fall on the other's shoulder as he hugged him, "Didn't even have to tell you, you already knew. I'll stay safe, don't worry."

"Good," Yusei stated, wrapping his arms around him as well and placing a kiss on the side of his head, "You leavin' now?"

"Yeah, just gotta grab a few things from the room first," Judai confirmed, though he didn't move, wanting to enjoy the hug for a bit longer. It was comforting and warm, things he needed before heading off to what he knew what be a long, tiring day of jumping around the spirit realm as fast as he could. He sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he just basked in the moment.

"I love you," Yusei murmured softly, squeezing him tighter for a second before bringing up a hand to scratch lightly through his hair.

"Love you, too," Judai replied back, finally bringing himself to pull back after a few more seconds. He leaned up, pressing their lips together in a short, but sweet kiss, grinning afterwards and earning himself a chuckle in return, "Don't let those gears of yours overwork today, got it?"

"Understood."

"Should I get like, a huge hydro flask of water and stick it right by your computer just in case?"

"I don't think that'll be necessary..."

"Or should I make a pot of tea and-"

"-Just go already, cute Kuriboh," Yusei interrupted, ruffling his hair as they both laughed and exchanged another quick kiss.

"Alright alright, be back soon!" Judai waved, walking up the stairs to get his stuff.

First things first, he needed to make a pit stop to his own dimension and pick up some duel monster currency from the castle. _Then_ he could actually buy what he wanted from the Aromages, which he was greatly looking forward to because it meant he could finally get that cat potion for Yusei.

...Wait, the Aromages were going to tease the hell out of him, weren't they? Ah well, it was definitely worth anything they could throw at him - if it meant he got to experience a Yusei with actual functioning cat ears and a tail for a day, then _nothing_ could stop him.


	206. Twenty Year Difference

_**7/25/19**_

Judai had done nothing in the last five minutes since teleporting to his dimension other than stare in amazement.

 _Green_ , he thought, eyes darting all over as he took in the sight of the castle in the distance as well, _There's green everywhere._

Well, not _completely_ everywhere, since there were still plenty of patches of dusty, gray ground, but the difference was still incomprehensible to him. Trees and bushes littered the realm, flowers bringing spots of other colors to mix in with the green and gray, and he could see dirt paths carved out that led to the villages he knew were scattered about around here.

Haou and Yubel had appeared next to him as well, also taking in the surroundings with wide eyes and slight disbelief.

"...It looks... almost like it did back then," Haou stated quietly, Yubel nodding in agreement while Judai racked his brain remembering the parts of Haou's memories he'd seen. Eventually he figured out what he was saying, and taking another quick glance around with it in mind, had to agree - it was starting to look the way it had thousands of years ago, back when Haou and Yubel had been _alive_.

It really was the same place, after all. It'd just been turned so unrecognizable that it was impossible to tell that it was.

"All this in twenty years?" Yubel wondered, nostalgia flowing through the connection quietly, "It was still a barren wasteland when we jumped."

Judai stewed over it for a few seconds with a frown, before he suddenly realized something important, "But the residents were changed. That'd be enough, wouldn't it?"

"You're right," Haou realized, "You went through the entire dimension and broke up all the conflicts you could, didn't you?"

It'd been one of the very few things Judai had done to utilize the political power the title of 'Supreme King' gave him - he figured that if he were going to help people and spirits, then he might as well start with his own land since as much as he had to get used to thinking about it, it was _his_. He was a ruler, and he had a responsibility to look out for the ones living in his territory.

It'd taken a solid three and a half months, but he'd managed to get through to every single resident and establish that the reign of wars was over, and that it was time to move on from all of the fighting that'd turned the place barren in the first place. His own servants had ironically been the hardest to get through to, considering they were the ones doing most of the terrorizing and fighting, and he'd _hated_ having to flaunt his powers and position the way he had, but it'd been more than worth it in the end.

Plus, those that had caused trouble during the transition had later apologized profusely after being allowed to leave and finally live their own lives if they'd wanted to, so that was nice.

The point was, however, that because the residents had changed so drastically in how they treated each other and lived life, they would obviously start to care about the fact they were living in a barren wasteland; Judai knew that a few had even been around since those thousands of years ago and remembered what it was like, so he wouldn't be surprised if they'd told stories about it and spurred everyone else to take action.

Seeing it regain so much of its former glory, looking so incredibly different from before was cathartic for Judai. He'd been dreading having to step foot in this place again, as he usually did thanks to the memories associated with it, but now?

He felt like he could actually breathe here, for once.

 _This is a place I'd want to show Yusei_ , he realized, feeling oddly proud of what'd happened over twenty years thanks to his initial influence, _I actually_ _ **want**_ _to bring him here._

In a significantly happier mood now thanks to the pleasant surprise and subsequent realization, he smiled widely and took a few steps forward, spinning around the face the other two and exclaiming, "Well, come on! We gotta explore the castle, it's definitely going to be different somehow too!"

"I wonder if they fixed the garden," Haou replied, following behind him next to Yubel.

"Just don't forget that we've got things to do," Yubel reminded him, though Judai knew all three of them felt reluctant to leave the place now, "We'll have plenty of time to explore later - hell, Judai, you can just bring Yusei along if you want. Then you can have someone other than us to drag along with you to wherever you want to go since we can exist here in spirit form and _not_ get pulled back to you if we end up more than a hundred feet away. You can do your thing and we can do ours."

"Ah, that's actually a really good idea," Judai blinked, humming happily as they walked, "Alright, exploring will come later then. Besides, we're going to get to explore someplace else today looking for Starlight Junktion and its card, so this works well."


	207. Starlight Junktion

_**7/26/19**_

He wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting from a place called Starlight Junktion, but from Judai's first look at the place from afar, up on the entrance platform, it certainly lived up to its name. There were more colors and lights scattered around than there were in Neo Domino, which was a seriously an impressive feat, and he could see immediately where it got its namesake from - there was a huge highway junction in the very middle of the city, whose streets ran outwards towards the edge of the city before scattering into hundreds of intertwining roads.

"Welcome to Starlight Junktion!" Junk Synchron cheered next to him, floating slightly forward so he could see him before pointing at their side, "The staircase to get down to the ground level is over here - it's just a bunch of tiny pegs on the wall though, so be really careful."

Judai blinked at the 'staircase', seeing that it was indeed just a collection of pegs that he was sure would be practically impossible to see unless you were looking for them. There was no way he was going to go down those, they were far too small for him to even get a grip on with his feet, so he shrugged and took a different route.

He hopped over the platform's safety railing and jumped, chuckling slightly in amusement at the flabbergasted looks Yusei's three duel spirits gave him after he'd landed on the ground safely. Judai was sturdy enough to be able to land on two feet without breaking a bone from that height - hell, he'd done it from higher before.

"G-give us a bit of warning next time!" Sonic Chick complained, flying down next to him while Synchron picked up Quillbolt and floated down, "Besides, don't you have wings?"

"I try not to use them too often, plus it wasn't _that_ high up - there was no reason to bring them out," Judai explained, grinning easily in the face of three exasperated duel monsters, "Either way, we're all down now, so lead the way! You guys know where the card is, right?"

"It's in the building that's right in the middle of the city, in the center of the highway junction," Quillbolt stated, waddling over to him. Judai picked him up, letting him sit on one of his arms with his back facing away from him so he didn't get stabbed by the bolts and screws in it.

"It'll say 'Restricted' everywhere around it, but I've got access to it since I'm part of the 'Junk' lineage so don't worry about that," Synchron added on, floating ahead of him, "Also, don't mind the streets and alleys here - it'll look very messy to you with all the stuff strewn about, but it's all actually organized and monitored! Monsters keep piles of scrap metal and such outside their houses, shops, and just pretty much anywhere they can that's not on the actual street or blocking the sidewalks."

He hadn't been kidding, either. As they wandered through the streets and alleys to get to the center, passing under dozens of highway roads that were suspended in the air by seemingly nothing, Judai saw more scrap parts and metal and technology than he'd ever seen before in his life; there were hundreds of unique contraptions littering the city, alongside dozens of Yusei's monsters that he'd only ever seen in passing - some Junk monsters and a lot of Scrap monsters.

Judai was a little surprised that Stardust Dragon wasn't here, though. He'd been half-expecting it since this place was occupied by so many of Yusei's spirits that it might as well be Yusei's territory the same was Judai owned it. Then again, Stardust very well could be here and merely deciding not to show their face until Yusei himself was able to visit.

 _Yusei is going to have an absolute field day when he comes to visit,_ Judai thought, seeing now that his spirits held every bit the creativeness and smarts that Yusei did. He looked forward to seeing what kinds of things they'd make when they were put together.

Soon enough they'd reached the center, easily entering the polished, modern-looking building thanks to Synchron flying up to the door and getting recognized by the scanning system. The group wove through a few rooms before finally stumbling across the one that held the card - it was safely stored away in a display case that was easily popped open, and it seemed to glitter slightly when Judai gently picked it up.

"Alright, thanks for helping me out so much guys, I appreciate it," Judai said, smiling at the spirits who merely shook their heads while looking excited.

"No, thank _you_ for finally getting that card to Yusei for us," Synchron replied, adjusting his scarf idly with one hand while he continued happily, "First you fixed his core, then you helped him with materializing us, and now this... we owe you so much, for everything."

Sonic Chick and Quillbolt nodded their heads vigorously in agreement, and Judai had to hold back a laugh at how endearing the trio was when they were together.

"If you really feel like you owe me somethin', then just pay it back by making sure Yusei finds his place here," Judai said, shaking his head slightly with an exasperated sigh, "Anyway, I should be off now, it's already nine o'clock and dinner is calling me." He thought for a few moments before stating, "I'll give the card to him tomorrow so he can come right away. Knowing him, he wouldn't get much sleep tonight if I told him now."

"That gives us time to tell everyone and prepare," Quillbolt chirped, rolling out of Judai's grasp when he let him back on the ground.

Judai double-checked to make sure the card was safe in his pocket before tearing open a portal and waving goodbye, stepping back into the bedroom with a relieved sigh; his stomach growled, and he was all too happy to go seek out Yusei downstairs and get some food in his stomach.

He hadn't eaten since breakfast and he definitely didn't count the crackers he'd gotten from the Aromages as a meal (though they were _really_ good crackers, made with some herbs from their forest that he didn't know much about). Plus, he was more than ready to curl up with Yusei and unwind after being hyper-vigilant for most of the day while checking places for corruption.


	208. Gifts

_**7/27/19**_

"You don't have anything planned for today, right?" Judai asked over breakfast, eyeing Yusei with a grin before popping another bite of egg into his mouth - he'd felt like having something simple this morning and Yusei had agreed, so they were both eating eggs on rice.

"I was going to tune the bikes a bit, but that can easily be put off for later," Yusei replied, giving him a curious look, "You want to go somewhere today?"

"In a way. I'll show you after breakfast," Judai said, waving his fork at him, "Got a little present for you."

Yusei raised a brow at that, but chose to silently continue to eat instead of commenting. Judai did note that he started eating ever-so-slightly faster though, which he held back a smirk at.

With breakfast finished and all the dishes washed and put away, Judai led him back to their room, sitting both of them on the bed and double-checking his pocket for the umpteenth time since last night. The feel of the card edge eased his bit of worry, so he turned to Yusei, excited to finally get the show on the road.

"Alright, so... I've spent the past two weeks, roughly, trying to find this to give to you," Judai started, smiling widely and leaning in closer for effect, "It was pretty difficult to locate, considering it was in the spirit realm and I had only a vague idea of where it could be."

"Is this the thing you've been writing about so much in that notebook of yours?" Yusei asked, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes slightly in thought. Judai could practically see the gears trying to turn, trying to figure out what he could've gotten.

"That's something partially related, so it'll be 'Part Two' to this," Judai replied, carefully sliding the card out of his pocket while making sure the back was to Yusei the whole time, "This is more important at the moment, though. This card is rightfully yours, one-of-a-kind, and you can thank your duel monsters for telling me it even existed in the first place."

Yusei stared in surprise, looking down at the card as Judai took his hand and placed it gently in his palm.

"Rightfully mine? What..." he trailed off, flipping the card over once Judai let go of his hand and reading it, "Starlight Junktion... wait, is this a field spell for my Junk monsters?!"

"Yup!" Judai chirped, happily watching as Yusei looked over the card with wide-eyes, "Junk Synchron told me about it, and also helped me come to the realization of 'Part Two' - AKA, if you send duel energy through a field spell the same way you would when materializing a monster or using a regular spell, then it'll open a portal to the place in the spirit realm. If you use it again while you're there, it'll take you back to the same spot where you left."

"So you're telling me I can _go_ here," Yusei stated, looking up at him in wonder, "To Starlight Junktion. Do my duel monsters all live there or something?"

"Yes and yes," he confirmed, scooting closer so he could reach up and push some hair out of the other's face, "You're gonna have a field day there, trust me. Your duel spirits are _way_ too much like you, you'll see."

"So that's why you asked if I had anything planned," Yusei mused, pulling him up into a hug and burying his head into the crook of his neck, "...Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet, I'm pretty sure your duel spirits are planning something big for your arrival," Judai chuckled, returning the hug and laughing when Yusei pulled back slightly to pepper his face with kisses, "H-Hey, that tickles!"

"I'm just showing my appreciation," Yusei teased, "Don't you like that?"

Judai huffed, smile stuck on his face as he stopped him with a kiss on the lips instead, "Come on, if we don't go now we're going to get too distracted."

"It's not my fault that you give me reasons to be distracted," Yusei replied, complying easily and getting up off the bed, "We'll go in a bit, I need to go get my glasses and wash up a bit."

"Oh! It's also cooler there, you might need a jacket," Judai remembered, "Weird to think about in the middle of summer, I know."


	209. Welcome Party

_**7/28/19**_

Judai whistled lowly at the welcome party Yusei's duel monsters had managed to conjure up in one night - there was a huge, lit up banner saying 'Welcome!' across two buildings (somehow they'd known where the portal would open, which was impressive) and a plethora of duel monsters gathered in the street, boasting books and parts and contraptions that they'd created. Looking a bit behind them, Judai could see a large warehouse whose door was pulled open, revealing tables of labelled, organized parts and cleared-off workspaces.

He was willing to bet that those parts had been scattered _everywhere_ before last night. Sometimes he could still find parts Yusei'd been working with in the most random of places despite his best efforts to make sure he didn't leave them laying around; he couldn't imagine what it was like to have that on a city-wide scale instead of a couple rooms.

"There's a lot of duel energy uses and tech here that you wouldn't be able to know about, so we decided to set-up a huge crash course for you," Junk Synchron explained, hanging off of Junk Warrior's head after everyone's initial, excited greetings, "We all have a few things that are our favorites, of course, but for the most part everything is utilized in our projects so it's all important - otherwise nothing will work here."

Yusei's face lit up like a child's on Christmas morning, a silly smile forming that made Judai even more happy that he'd made this happen. After all, Yusei plus new technology and ideas equalled a very determined and ecstatic Yusei.

At that moment a roar interrupted them, pulling everyone's attention behind them and into the air as Stardust Dragon flew into view. An empty space was quickly created in front of Yusei so the dragon could land, head bowing lowly so Yusei could reach up and pet them.

"Stardust..." Yusei murmured, smile turning softer with the dragon's presence, "You live here too, huh? Does that make it your domain, like the way Ancient Fairy Dragon's forest is?"

Stardust nodded slightly, letting out a happy purr at attention they were getting. Yusei had summoned them once before for something on April Fool's Day since it was during the time Judai was having him build up his stamina for materializing monsters, so they weren't nearly as pushy for attention like they'd been the first time - granted, it probably helped that Yusei wasn't suffering from a huge loss of energy this time. He really hadn't been ready to summon his ace yet at the time and he'd gotten a _massive_ headache thanks to doing so, which the dragon had, of course, picked up on and worried about.

"So? You like it here?" Judai asked, smiling cheekily at the scene.

"I love it," Yusei corrected, turning back to him to return the smile, "I'd never have imagined a place like this existed..."

Another interruption came in the form of a Kuriboh cry, a small blue, spiky sphere floating out of the crowd. Judai didn't even have to do a thing before Winged Kuriboh was suddenly there as well, flying in circles around the newcomer with happy cries of his own.

Yusei blinked as the new Kuriboh quickly moved over to him, holding out a card insistently and looking incredibly happy when he gently took it from him, "...Junkuriboh, huh?"

"Looks like you've got a Kuriboh of your own now," Judai stated, laughing at the sight of Junkuriboh pressing lightly into Yusei's chest in its own form of a hug before chirping and running off with Winged Kuriboh, "I don't think they'll be coming back any time soon... he seems a lot more energetic than Kuribon is, so who knows how long it'll take for those two to get tired."

"You're going to get a lot of cards today as some of the shyer ones decide to come out that still have theirs," Quillbolt explained, getting a boost up by Junk Archer's arms so he was easier to see, "A lot of 'em never got the chance to have an owner because they were stuck here with all of however many copies they have, so they're pretty eager to be able to meet you."

"Come on though, let's go already!" Junk Synchron complained, excitement clearly winning out over listening to the conversation, "There's so much to show you and time's ticking away!"

"Alright, sounds good to me," Yusei agreed, stumbling slightly and chuckling when the duel monster floated over and started tugging him along enthusiastically.

Judai caught up to them easily, threading his fingers through Yusei's free hand that wasn't being pulled as he said, "I'll stay for a bit more, but I actually need to check on a few more places today. Sorry, Yus."

"Don't worry about it, I understand," Yusei reassured him, squeezing his hand tightly and turning just barely enough to be able to catch him in a quick kiss, "Again, make sure you try to stay safe, okay? In the meantime, I'll make something cool for you to come back and see."

"I'll be looking forward to it," he smiled, blinking before looking back at Stardust, who'd been following on Yusei's other side, "Oh yeah! Just thought I'd let you know, but your territory's free of any signs of corruption for literal miles outside of it's boundaries. I did a quick look-over before I came last night, you're good."

Stardust growled back lowly, nodding in appreciation at the information before deciding to take off to the sky again when they finally reached the warehouse entrance.

Of course, upon seeing the rows upon rows of parts and pieces, Yusei was immediately enthralled and pulled into the quick explanations his duel monsters provided. Judai was fully content with watching the scene from a chair to the side, smiling fondly as Yusei picked up on the uses and nuances of things in record speed.


	210. Garden Variety

**_7/29/19_**

Judai was relieved to finally be able to finish up his rounds and return to Starlight Junktion to see what they'd gotten up to while he was gone - he'd found a couple traces of corruption on some spirits, but it was easy enough to get rid of and they were all very cooperative. Still, despite how easy it was, he was tired since he'd been spreading out his senses for so long over a _huge_ radius. To put it into perspective, Neo Domino was a small circle compared to the area he'd been covering all day.

He made a pit stop back to the castle though, deciding that he wanted to see how the gardens were doing. To all three's delight, they were well-kept and a plethora of different plants were thriving in it, including a variety of fruits and vegetables. Most of them were kinds that couldn't be found anywhere but in the spirit dimension, so Judai found a bag and filled it with a couple of each through Haou and Yubel's guidance; they knew which ones were ripe and told him accordingly, along with a couple descriptions of how each one tasted and was typically eaten or prepared.

"Oh, there's a section for tea leaves," Yubel pointed out, bringing their attention over to a small corner of the garden that was relatively close to where Judai was picking some oddly-shaped fruit off a tree, "There's a few kinds, from the looks of it."

"Isn't there a section of the garden made for tea parties or something like that?" Judai asked, dropping the fruit in the bag with a smile - he was itching to experiment with the new types of food, so he'd ended up grabbing more than he'd originally planned to. Whenever he came back, he planned on grabbing a few of those tea leaves too so he could prep them and try out a few blends.

"Not exactly," Haou mused - he was in a particularly good mood, and Judai could feel through the connection how his restored home was making him feel better, "It's just a small, cleared out area and there's only a single table there with two chairs."

"Sounds like a nice place for afternoon tea to me," Judai shrugged with a grin, "In other words, tea party."

"That'd involve more than two people."

"A party's as big as you want it to be, two people is perfectly acceptable for one."

Judai laughed at the very exasperated, judgmental stare he got from Haou, noting that Yubel had nodded along with his answer in agreement.

"It's getting late" Yubel reminded after a few more fruits and vegetables were collected. While Haou had gotten more talkative from the happy nostalgia the place gave him, Yubel had actually become calmer, not being as teasing as she usually was.

"You're right, I should probably go now," Judai agreed, brushing dirt off his knees as he got up from the planter he'd pulled the last few plants from, "Gods know Yusei probably hasn't even noticed it's nighttime yet, let alone past noon."

He was right, of course. When he got there, parts had been assembled and scattered in the empty area outside the warehouse and Yusei and his duel spirits were gathered around the main machine in the middle. Judai had no idea what it could be for, but judging from the size of it and the amount of sensors and cords leading to the computer Yusei was using, they'd been at it for a while now so it had to be complicated.

There was no way he could fault any of them for not taking breaks, not after seeing just how excited all of them had been before he'd left, so he just smiled and sighed fondly as he made his presence known; Yusei turned to him with an eager smile, a happy glint in his eyes as he waved him over to look at what they'd created, and Judai rested his head on his shoulder contently as he listened.


	211. Date Ideas

_**7/30/19**_

Yusei sighed in annoyed acceptance the next morning when he woke up and found a notice on his phone saying that there'd be a meeting in a couple days. It was in the early morning too, which meant he'd have to get up early and try to resist crawling back into his warm bed that contained a warm Judai.

Judai shifted next to him at the sound, so Yusei put the phone back and softly ran his fingers through the other's hair to put him at ease. A yawn escaped him as he looked at the clock, noting that it was almost nine thirty and he should probably get back to work; not only did he need to work a bit overtime to prepare for the meeting, but he wanted to finish up everything now as fast as he could so that he could spend some more time with his duel spirits. They'd introduced him to so many new concepts and ways of thinking about things like A.I. and how duel energy can be utilized, and now he wanted to tinker and test them all out until he was proficient in them.

Judai told him about the dream method as well and the favor he'd used on Phoenix and Manjoume, and he'd decided he might as well try it too. The other two had described a 'slight pull' feeling on them in their sleep when they first started showing signs of it possibly working, which was something Yusei was already able to feel last night - it was probably due to his connection not only to his spirits but the place itself too, seeing as he'd already been to it unlike the other two.

Yusei ended up dozing lightly instead of getting up, enjoying an extra twenty minutes of half-asleep bliss with Judai tucked into his chest before one of them finally woke up.

"G'morni-" Judai started to say, cutting himself off with an involuntary yawn before flopping his head down into his shoulder and burying it, "Mornin' Yus. Sleep well?"

"Very," he replied, reluctantly nudging the other to get up after he blinked the sleep from his eyes, "In other news though, I need to work. Just found out I have a meeting in a few days and I have to present."

"Aw, that sucks," Judai groaned, "I wanted to bring you somewhere but that'll have to wait until after that, then."

Yusei looked down at him curiously, wondering what he could've thought of this time - it felt like Judai never ran out of ideas of things to do and places to go, and they always ended up being fun or interesting somehow. Maybe part of that was because Yusei hadn't been able to explore the world like that for most of his life, so it was all new experiences for him, but he liked being able to do all these things he'd never be able to think of on his own.

"Where'd you wanna go?" he asked, tilting his head as he thought about his scheduling for the next few days, "Depending on what it is, I might have time beforehand."

"Definitely not, it's an all day type of thing," Judai immediately replied, shooting him a grin, "And it's a secret where, so you'll just have to wait a few extra days to find out when we go on our date."

"So it's a date, huh?" Yusei mused, smiling fondly before pulling the other into a hug, "I'm slacking on these things, you've come up with every single one so far."

"Does the day where we went to the stadium count as a date? Because that's one you came up with."

"...Kind-of? Do _you_ count it?"

"Yeah, of course I do! That was some nice quality time we had there together," Judai nodded, sharing a look with him before they both broke into laughter.

"Sleeping on a stadium floor," Yusei snorted, "My date ideas are _fantastic_."

"Hey, that was nice! I liked it quite a lot, thank you very much," Judai retorted, hitting him lightly on the arm, "You come up with date ideas just fine, dear. Don't worry about it."

"Alright alright, I trust you," Yusei conceded, feeling a bit better about his sudden realization now. He'd just have to sit and really brainstorm a few things that he could do with Judai that would constitute as a date.

"Go get working, I'll make breakfast," Judai said after a couple seconds of silence, catching him in a much-welcomed morning kiss that Yusei ended up prolonging by not letting him pull away when he went to.

If he was going to be overworking again, then Yusei was going to take all the chances he got to _not_ be working, especially when those chances involved being with Judai in some way.


	212. Cat Rejuvenation

_**7/31/19**_

"I think my brain is melted," Yusei said as he walked in the door, shrugging his bag off to the side and haphazardly tossing his keys on the coffee table before making his way to Judai on the couch. He pouted when Judai got up before he could fall on it, letting himself get turned around and pushed towards the kitchen despite every instinct telling him to just pull him back to the couch.

He knew better than to try, though. When Judai truly didn't want to get moved somewhere or wanted someone else to move, he had no issues using his shadows to make it happen.

"Well, use the last of that brain power to eat some dinner, it's almost midnight," Judai replied, sitting him down at the kitchen table before suddenly a warm bowl of soup was in front of him, "Chicken noodle, since I figured it'd be nice after a long day like today. Your work seriously has issues, man."

"Don't I know it," he muttered, slowly taking a bite of the soup and savoring the taste - it really was comforting after all the shit he'd gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

"How did a morning meeting turn into a day-long goose chase anyway?" Judai asked, frowning at him in concern, "You told me to ask later when you first messaged me, remember? You seemed pretty annoyed."

"I was," Yusei sighed, quietly taking a few more bites before answering, "More paperwork issues, but it was also because of the report I made about the old reactor. I mentioned that there was a lot of active duel energy still in the air- I made sure not to mention anything about you or Johan, by the way - and it ended up causing a chain reaction that ended up with numerous people going to the site while the rest of us were told to 'Figure out a solid plan by the end of the day to deal with it.'"

Which, of course, was literally impossible for them to do when they had no clue how one goes about disposing of such duel energy in the first place. Momentum was already tricky enough for them to work with, but really old duel energy that'd overstayed its welcome was on an entirely different level. Of course, when they tried to explain this to the higher-ups they didn't succeed, so they ended up spending all day coming up with a half-baked solution that was total bullshit but looked professional so they could all finally go home and think about it another day.

"Well, look at the bright side - at least you have an entire team of people to help you figure it out now instead of just me and Johan," Judai stated.

Yusei barely took notice of him sitting in the chair next to him, checking his phone while he waited for him to finish eating. By the time he finished, the food had helped him to start winding down and he was more than ready to crawl into bed; Judai put his empty bowl in the sink to deal with in the morning and gently coaxed him out of the chair and up the stairs, though Yusei did hear him snicker a time or two at something.

He was too tired to try and figure out what he was laughing at, so he just mentally shrugged it off and almost robotically went about the motions getting ready for bed. Much to his annoyance though, right when he was about to throw the sheets back he was stopped by Judai and sat down in the middle of the bed instead.

"Judai," Yusei said flatly, feeling his eye twitch slightly as he gave the other what he hoped was a deathly glare. He loved him and all, but sleep was calling him and his brain had nearly completely shut off at this point.

"I know I know, but here - I thought now would be a good time for it," Judai replied quickly, pulling out a familiar bottle of liquid and pressing it into his hand, "Trust me, you'll be able to sleep and feel real nice, I'll pet your ears and you'll feel like you're in heaven."

 _So it is a cat potion then_ , Yusei thought, staring at the bottle for a few seconds before deciding that he'd trust what Judai had said and popped the cap open. It was gone after a few moments and he let Judai take it back to put on the side table, blinking when he felt an odd, tingly sensation on his head and his tailbone.

His hearing suddenly got really clear and he instantly focused on Judai's breathing, blocking out as much of the extra sounds he could now here as he could. He put a hand up to his head curiously, feeling soft fur and in turn, the warmth of his hand on his new ears; he could feel something moving behind him too, and few flicks told him that it was a tail.

"Ah... you're adorable," Judai sighed happily, giving him a look that made Yusei's face heat up a little even through the haze of tiredness - it was just so loving and fond, with a small, honest little smile to top it off, "C'mere, lie down and curl up until you're comfortable."

He did so, ending up with his head buried into the other's chest while using his shoulder as a pillow - it was a bit unusual of a position since Judai was usually the one doing that. Instead of saying anything once he was comfortable enough, he simply nudged him with his face, tugging a little at the hoodie under his fingers as well.

Yusei was completely unprepared for the feeling of his new ears being scratched and pet lightly, and he let out a little content moan. He heard Judai chuckle a bit at the sound, saying something that he only registered subconsciously as his mind finally went blissfully blank.

"Feels good, right? Sleep well, you're going to be making a lot more of that sound for me in the morning~"


	213. Getting Revenge

**_8/1/19_**

Waking up was even nicer than it was falling asleep; Yusei felt incredibly relaxed as he woke up second for once to his new ears being pet by Judai, enjoying the feeling it gave him and actively pushing his head further into the other's hand.

"G'mornin' sleepyhead," Judai greeted quietly, the hand he wasn't using to scratch his ears pulling him up a little so they were face-to-face, "Feeling better this morning?"

Yusei merely hummed out a positive answer, letting his eyes close again as he re-latched onto Judai's hoodie and tangled their legs together more. To his delight Judai kept up the ministrations, letting the peaceful morning silence fill the air so he could focus entirely on the new sensations he was feeling.

Judai felt so warm against him, which stood out even more than usual - Yusei assumed it was because, as they'd both predicted before, being a cat amplified his love for napping whenever he was warm. One of his fingers brushed against the other's hoodie strings, which resulted in immediate transfixion as he opened his eyes and took one in his hand.

Without really thinking about it he pushed away slightly, ignoring the questioning noise Judai made in response in favor of batting at the string in his hand instead. The back and forth movement was practically mesmerizing for a reason unknown to him, so he continued to play with both the strings, only looking up when he heard Judai chuckle at him.

Of course, that was when it finally registered in his mind what he was doing and Yusei felt his face warm in embarrassment. He'd known what he'd been getting into, and now he truly understood what Judai had meant by 'following his instincts'; it was nearly impossible to not follow them when one was under the effect of the potion, and it felt completely natural to do so.

"I can't decide what I like better," Judai laughed lightheartedly, pulling him back closer to him and pecking him on the lips, "Seeing you so relaxed or seeing you with cat ears and a tail and being cute."

"I don't know about you, but I'm fully enjoying the benefits of both right now," Yusei replied with a slight sigh of happiness. It went quiet for another minute or two, before suddenly a hand that he hadn't noticed wandering stroked his tail and he _jumped_.

He felt his face flush red as Judai slowly pet his tail, giving him a startled look that quickly turned into an embarrassed pout at the sight of Judai looking incredibly smug, "This is revenge, isn't it?"

"Oh definitely," Judai chirped back, suddenly pulling them both up in such a way that Yusei fell forwards onto his lap - in fact, Yusei was sure this was almost exactly what had happened before, but with the roles reversed now instead. Judai had let go of his tail for a bit, which gave him some time to get his bearings back (or at least, a semblance of them) while they adjusted their position to be more comfortable. They ended up in a half lying, half sitting position against the pillows, with Yusei on top and practically lying on top of the other, who still had a hand giving attention to his ears despite all the movement.

"You're good with this, right?" Judai double-checked quietly as they settled in, switching to stroking his hair gently for a moment, "If it gets to be too much, just tell me, okay?"

"I am and I will, don't worry," Yusei replied with a smile, suddenly feeling a bit bold and continuing, "In fact, I bet I can do better than you did."

Judai paused at that, and suddenly it was like a switch had flipped. Yusei had no time to prepare for the sudden, dark chuckle and smirk that made his heart skip a beat, nor the half-lidded, playfully glinting eyes that clearly showed that Judai had accepted the challenge.

"So you want to play like that, hm?" Judai said lowly, leaning up so he could whisper huskily into his ear, "I'm going to have fun proving you wrong, pulling all those little noises that I love out of you."

A warm mouth was suddenly on his and a hand wrapped back around his tail, making him yelp before he could do nothing but melt into a puddle of goo. Yusei definitely did _not_ regret making that bet, not in the slightest, and as he couldn't help but let out strangled noises like Judai said he'd make him do when the hand on his tail found a particularly sensitive spot and focused on it, he thought that it might just be a good thing if he ended up losing the bet, too.


	214. Teasing and Jokes

_**8/2/19**_

Judai knew that he was being a bit too overbearing at the moment, but he couldn't bring himself to care about it; Yusei was responsive to his constant need for physical contact, whether it be through hugging him, petting his ears, or pressing into his side, and he hadn't asked him to stop at all, so he didn't.

It was to the point that he wondered if something about the transformation was triggering some part of his duel monster side to make him like this. When it was him that'd been affected before it hadn't felt much different besides the obvious, but with Yusei transformed he felt oddly more... protective? Like the time where they'd gone to the reactor and Judai hadn't been able to pry himself away from Yusei at all for the rest of the day, except in a milder form this time.

"Ah... can you get my glasses for me please?" Yusei asked, looking up at him from where half-laid in his lap on their bed. They'd ended up grabbing a quick breakfast and bringing it back up to their room to eat in bed so they could cuddle while they did so.

Judai carefully picked up the glasses from the side table, making sure not to get any fingerprints on it as he passed it over, "Here you go."

"Thank you," Yusei smiled, taking them and slipping them on before he pulled out his phone to check a few things.

Judai found himself staring at the sight, the glasses feeling like the final nail in the coffin for him to finally, for the first time in his life, give in to the giddy feeling he'd had building up inside him the whole time.

He _squealed_. Granted, it was quietly, but still loud enough to get Yusei's attention on him - the other blinked in confusion when Judai couldn't stop himself from squishing the other's cheeks, his own cheeks hurting from the silly, dopey smile he was unable to prevent from staying.

"J-Judai, what're you doing?" Yusei questioned, laughing as he showed no signs of stopping from playing with his face, "H-hey!" His glasses skewed slightly with all the movement, which didn't help anything at all and in fact made things _worse_ for Judai.

"I can't take it anymore, how are you so freaking cute?!" Judai exclaimed, pulling him up easily and flipping him around to face him before going back to messing with his face, "Look at this, it's not fair at all. Perfect, I tell you, _perfect_."

"I-I dunno, and that's going a bit far, don't you think?" Yusei replied, doing his best to try and fix his glasses while simultaneously attempting to ease some of the torture his cheeks were experiencing, "Maybe it's more a 'Judai' thing here than a 'Yusei' thing."

"No, you're perfect," Judai repeated in response, pouting at him playfully as he let up on the other's face only to move to trailing his fingers around his neck - he hadn't forgotten that Yusei was sensitive there, after all, and he was heavily invested into teasing his boyfriend right now.

Speaking of which, that reminded him that he had an entire notebook of things about cats from that time he and Crow had Yusei rant to them about various cat facts that would help them take care of Pharaoh; he bet a read-through of a few pages of that would give him some great material to use on his unfairly cute boyfriend, who was currently living up to that description with the slightly-flustered look he was giving him.

He looked like he was trying to hide behind his glasses or something, what with how he was looking down and up at him through his lashes.

Like Judai said, perfect and totally unfair. For now though, he could remember a few tidbits from what he was now labelling the 'Cat Fact Encyclopedia', and a couple of them would be easy to tease Yusei with. A few extra seconds of thinking through how to go about it was all he needed before he pulled Yusei close for a quick kiss.

"I'm curious about something," Judai started after they pulled apart, bringing a hand up to scratch at one of Yusei's fluffy ears and slowly maneuvering him so he was sitting sideways in his lap.

Yusei hummed in confusion, eyes closing as he happily leaned into his hand and curled in towards his chest, "Should I be worried about that?"

Judai chuckled at his response, pecking his forehead before saying, "Maybe. I'm curious to see if catnip will have an effect on you." He laughed at the immediate, exasperated look he got in return, loving the range of expressions he was getting to see from Yusei.

"Catnip makes cats _high_ , Judai."

"Uh-huh."

"You want to see me get _high_? On _catnip_?"

"Well, we don't know if it'll actually work or not-"

"Judai, no. Just no."

"Aw, don't worry, I'm just teasin' ya," Judai relented, ruffling Yusei's hair lightly, "What about if I got out a ball of yarn, though? You already played with my hoodie like that earlier."

The deadpan stare he got in answer had Judai cackling like a mad man as he moved Yusei off him and tossed out a ball of yarn from the closet crafts bin. Needless to say, Judai was quite ecstatic that got what he wanted in the end as Yusei let himself follow his instincts and bat the ball around.


	215. Cat Communication

**_8/3/19_**

This time, it was Yusei's turn to have a nice, long chat with Pharaoh. All three of them were on the couch, and Judai was idly scrolling through his phone with an arm wrapped around the other, who had Pharaoh sitting next to him and meowing in response to any and all questions Yusei had for him.

Judai still remembered what the cat had told him before, when he'd been able to actually talk with him himself - he'd been informed about what'd happened while he'd been gone, and was happy to hear that the professor hadn't moved on yet and was instead roaming around the outskirts of different spirit realms trying to fill in even more of his historical records. It'd been partially inspired by Judai's journey to figure out how to jump through time, since in the end he'd sought out an unknown group of duel monsters in a very remote, unexplored area that were able to help him out; learning that whole groups of monsters existed out in the middle of nowhere was reason enough for Daitokuji to pack up his bags, tell Pharaoh to go live a good life, and hit the road.

The professor would probably find some way of informing him that he was back when he returned (provided it was in the next sixty years, of course) so Judai just had to look forward to that day. He was interested to hear about everything the other had discovered, which would hopefully in turn help him with figuring out a more permanent solution of fighting back Darkness and the Light of Destruction.

He'd done a pretty good job of that so far - he'd been forced to actively seek them out right before he jumped through time, if only to make sure nothing happened while he was gone, but it was only temporary. Judai was determined, though, and he wanted to make sure he had a better solution so that he didn't have to worry Yusei so much.

Seeking out the two forces' influence in the spirit world and on Earth was far too time consuming to feasibly do with his situation now, after all. The last thing he ever wanted to do was to have to leave for a solid couple months hunting down corruption, which was something he'd done before and wasn't a pleasant experience in the slightest. Now that he had Yusei to think about, he couldn't just gallivant off into the corners of the world and therefore needed to find a way to prevent that.

"What're you thinkin' about?" Yusei asked, snapping him out of his thoughts and to the other under his arm.

"Ah, not much," Judai replied, shrugging the thoughts out of his head for now - worrying so much about it now wasn't very conducive to actually making anything happen, after all, "Did you guys finish talking? Where'd Pharaoh go?"

"Yeah, he said he was going out to beg for treats," Yusei chuckled, "Apparently there's a popular park around here where lots of kids like to give him snacks."

"I wonder if I need to bring him to the vet again just in case. He could very well get fat in a bad way if this keeps up," Judai noted, opening up a reminder on his phone and setting it to remind him in a few days about Pharaoh.

"At least he exercises," Yusei smiled.

They both shared a look before glancing down at each other and catching each other's eyes again in sheepishness.

"Y'know, we should probably do that, like run together or workout or something," Judai stated, starting to pet Yusei again now that his attention was fully back on him.

Yusei nodded in agreement, letting out a content hum before replying, "We have weights somewhere in the main closet, but I don't know where in it they are."

"That's fine, we can just stick with other things for now then. Not running, though, it's too hot for that right now - when the weather cools down a bit, then we can," he said with a grin,

"I'll think about it later," Yusei concluded, proceeding to give Judai a happy surprise by sitting up straighter and flipping himself onto his lap to curl up into him, "For now though, more pets."

"You really like this, huh?" Judai mused, leaning down to put a quick kiss to the tip of his nose, "I still say I should go get a little bit of catnip right now, to see how it affects you and-"

" _No_ , dammit."

"Was worth another shot."

"That's the fourth shot you've taken today..."

"It's a revolver man, I've got two more shots. I'm feeling pretty lucky, y'know."

Yusei rolled his eyes at the joke, burying his face into his chest so he didn't have to look at him. Judai chuckled and merely hugged him tight, rubbing their cheeks together and grinning at the laugh it pulled out of the other.

Silence fell for a few minutes, and right as Judai was about to check if Yusei had fallen asleep or something, the other spoke up and asked, "Can we have something with fish for dinner?"

Judai snorted at the question, still getting a kick out of how much being a cat was affecting Yusei, "Sure, haven't cooked with fish in a little while."

As they discussed what to make that was seafood for dinner, Judai continued to gently stroke the other's ears, feeling vaguely like he could go back to sleep. Afterwards, Yusei was the first to succumb to taking a cat nap and Judai found himself following soon after, feeling very comfortable sitting there on the couch like that and with Yusei in his arms.


	216. Cats and Birds

_**8/4/19**_

Judai stared at the scene from the doorway, letting the door shut behind him lightly in the meantime.

"I... I was gone for twenty minutes," he blinked, lips twitching before he dropped the grocery bag he was holding on the ground so he could guffaw into his hands, "What'd you guys do?! It's a total mess in here!"

"This is _not_ my fault," Jack stated quickly, pointing at Crow, "It's _his_."

"Hey! It is _not_ my fau- Yusei, stop it!" Crow complained, squeaking and running behind Jack, who tried to move away so he couldn't be used as a shield.

Yusei, who'd just batted Crow in the arm, glared at the pair before walking over to Judai and explaining, "They kept making cat jokes, so I figured I should claw them - y'know, like an actual cat would do if they were provoked." The frown he wore disappeared and was replaced with a happy smile when Judai reached up and pet him lightly in greeting, and he ended up latching onto his arm afterwards.

"Must've been some pretty bad jokes," Judai snickered, glancing around the room again at all the thrown pillows and blankets, "If that's the case, then what's up with all the pillows and stuff?"

"Protection against the feral feline over there," Crow answered, narrowing his eyes and hiding further behind Jack when Yusei proceeded to actually _hiss_ at him.

"Only a bird brain would try to use easily rip-able fabric against a cat," Yusei replied, eye twitching as he hung on to Judai's arm a bit tighter.

"... _Okay_ , uh, how about you two grab all this stuff and put it back upstairs while Yusei and I go make dinner," Judai said, laughing a bit nervously at the legitimate hostility between the two brothers. Thankfully Jack seemed to get the memo, giving him a slight nod in agreement with his plan and dealing with Crow while he gently pushed Yusei into the kitchen and out of sight of the living room.

"Are you okay?" Judai asked slowly, giving Yusei a raised eyebrow after putting down the food on the kitchen counter and sitting him at the table. He watched as Yusei stared at him in confusion for a moment before he blinked, a look of realization crossing his face.

"Ah... I think I am now," he replied quietly, glancing down at his hands before looking back up at him in slight shock, "Did that just happen?"

"It did," Judai confirmed, scooting his chair over and gently taking one of his hands in his, "What happened? Were the jokes really bad or something?"

"I- no, they really weren't, but I vaguely remember something setting me off," Yusei frowned, trying to remember what it had been.

Judai thought as well, and they fell into silence for a bit before Pharaoh slunk back through the window and meowed at them in greeting. He ended up jumping into Yusei's lap, curling up for a bit and enjoying the attention Yusei started giving him.

 _Cats, huh?_ Judai wondered, thinking back over the exchange that'd taken place, _He clearly was upset with something Crow said and Jack seemed to be relatively done with the situation, so it's just something with Crow._

What had Yusei called him again in retaliation? A bird brain?

...Wait. Could it really be that simple? Then again, with the way the potion effects worked, it made a lot of sense so he really shouldn't be surprised.

"It's 'cause Crow is a bird," Judai stated, elaborating a bit when Yusei gave him a questioning look, "Cats and birds? Y'know, the classic 'They don't get along' scenario."

"But he's not... he's not actually a _bird_ ," Yusei said, though he couldn't hold back a laugh when he thought about it.

Seeing him smiling again was all Judai needed to keep trying to make him laugh, "But he's got hair that's like a bird's nest, his name is a bird, and he uses bird duel monsters and has bird duel spirits. Pretty sure that's more than enough for you to register him as a bird."

"I think you're right," Yusei grinned, laughing fully now at the idea and leaning on his side while he did so, "Actually, one of his duel spirits did appear for a few seconds before disappearing again upon seeing me now that I think about it. That might've had something to do with it."

"Well, either way, at least we know to keep you two relatively separated for the rest of the night. You can just apologize to each other tomorrow," Judai concluded, pressing a kiss to the base of the cat ear closest to him and smiling at the very tiny shiver and hum Yusei gave in return, "For now though, we've got fish to prepare, you cute cat."

He ended up having to wait a few minutes for himself to calm down before they could actually start cooking, because right after he said that both Yusei and Pharaoh popped their heads up to him excitedly and he broke down into teary laughter at the sight.


	217. Feeling at Home

_**8/5/19**_

Considering it had been almost one o'clock in the morning when Yusei took the potion, he'd get the chance to fall asleep with Judai petting his ears twice instead of once like when it'd been Judai's turn; then again, if Yusei was counting the nap they took that afternoon, then it was technically three times that he'd get to.

Once they were all settled in bed for the night (relatively early, as it had been a lazy day and those always seemed to be tiring somehow despite doing nothing all day), Yusei hummed contently and buried his head into Judai's shoulder. He was getting to be the one curling up to the other's side for once yet again and he found that he was really starting to like the feel of it.

"So there was one mishap, but other than that it was nice, right?" Judai asked, keeping quiet so as to not disturb the peaceful night silence too much, which Yusei appreciated. His hearing was still better than normal, after all, and while during the day talking at normal volumes wasn't too bad to deal with thanks to the white noise of the city being pretty loud to begin with, at night it was a different story.

"It was," Yusei agreed, "I can see why you were so adamant about making me try it, now."

"Would you want to do it again?"

"...Probably on a day where it's just us, preferably."

"So that's a yes, then," Judai laughed softly, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, "Maybe next time we should swap and see if there's any differences we can feel."

"I don't think a fox really fits me, though," Yusei replied, smiling to himself as he buried his head further into the other's shoulder, "Wasn't matching what fits us the point of this in the first place?"

"Nah, it was originally just figuring out what the hell kind of potion the Aromages had given me. For you it was matching, though," Judai stated, and Yusei felt him shrug lightly under his head, "I think it'd be fun to try switching, or maybe trying something else. While I was there the other day they showed me a couple other things in the back that they didn't tell us about before because they wanted the potion they slipped me to be a surprise."

"Tell me about it later, I don't know if I'll remember it right now," Yusei mumbled in response, starting to feel the edges of sleep come on - he'd much rather just go over it once later than make Judai have to tell him multiple times.

"Alright, that'll work," Judai said, adjusting his grip a bit before going back to stroking his ears and hair, "I had another thing I wanted to ask you about but it can wait too."

"Well, do I have to remember it? If I don't, then ask away," Yusei replied, letting out a little yawn that he couldn't stop.

It was silent for a few moments, Judai clearly thinking about it before he came to a conclusion, "I guess you don't have to, it's just an idea for now and not something that'll happen too soon, I think. It's just, you know how Crow's been applying for the pro leagues? And Jack's hanging out with Carly a lot more?"

Yusei hummed in confirmation, wondering where he was going with this - everyone was finally starting to settle in and find their place and what they wanted to do, which was a good thing and something he was happy to see after all the shit they went through to have the chance for it.

"Well... I wouldn't be surprised if it's just us two here eventually," Judai continued, resting his chin on his head and sighing ever-so-slightly, "And at that point, I was wondering how you felt about getting a house somewhere? We'd have to plan it out, of course, and find a good place that's big enough for all your stuff but-"

"I'd love that," Yusei interrupted, pulling back a little so he could smile at him and give him a small kiss, "So don't worry about it, okay? Besides... there's no way I'd want to live in this apartment for too long when I have the chance to have an entire workshop."

Judai snorted at that, giving him a silly, happy smile in return and teasing, "Of course you wouldn't. Why do I get the feeling dragging you out of that place will be nearly impossible?"

"At least it'll all be one place unlike right now, where it's split between storage, the garage space we're allotted here and inside the apartment."

"Oh man, I think we should really be looking at buying land more than anything else now. We're going to need so much space for the stuff we do - your gadgets, both our duel spirits, my occasional random idea that ends up being a disaster."

"I think you're right," Yusei yawned, curling back into him and closing his eyes, "Well, we'll think about it more when it starts looking more like it'll happen..."

"Sleep well," Judai chuckled, "Love you."

"Love you too..." Yusei mumbled back, lured easily to sleep by the feel of fingers on his ears and the warmth surrounding him.


	218. Day Before Tanabata

_**8/6/19**_

"Oh... that's right!" Judai realized, reading the notification that'd popped up on his phone while they were asleep. It was a calendar reminder, one of the usual ones that he'd get about upcoming holidays.

"What's up?" Yusei asked, not bothering to look up from where his head was currently buried into the pillow and Judai's hair.

"The Tanabata Festival is tomorrow," Judai replied, unlocking his phone so he could start looking up event locations in the city, "Well, the main day at least - there's always festivities beforehand."

"I haven't actually participated in that before," Yusei admitted, mumbling sleepily into his hair, "Didn't have the means to before, and then last year was such a mess that I just didn't bother."

"Well, we'll just have to fix that," Judai grinned, scrolling through a few of the lists he'd been able to find. It seemed that there'd be one relatively close-by that'd have all the classic food and game stalls, and there'd be plenty of bamboo trees set up for writing wishes, so he figured that was all they needed and went with it.

"...Don't we need yukata?" Yusei mentioned, finally sitting up a bit to look questioningly at him, "Neither of us have one."

"I mean, you don't _have_ to have one to go to a festival, but it'd certainly be more fun," Judai answered, giving him a reassuring smile and brushing some of the other's bed-head out of his face, "Plus, it'll give you the full experience that way."

"How're we going to get ones before tomorrow, then?"

"Don't worry about that, let me handle it. You just focus on your work, okay?"

Yusei nodded, agreeing easily to letting him figure out the little details before yawning and fully sitting upright, "I'll try to get some extra done today, but... I might not be able to. It all depends on the results of the little experiment I'm doing for one of the other researchers right now."

"Even if you can't, we can just go after dinner tomorrow," Judai shrugged, not bothered in the slightest by the possibility and getting up himself so he could give Yusei a quick peck on the lips with a smile, "You don't usually work after dinner, plus the booths are always open super late because nighttime is when all the lights get turned on - people usually come out just to see how pretty they are."

He got another kiss in return for the reassurance before Yusei hopped out of bed with a slight huff, moving to clean himself up a bit before they went downstairs for breakfast. Watching Yusei go about washing his face and brushing his hair carefully made him smile fondly, though it also brought along another sudden realization.

"Oh whoa, I just realized somethin'," Judai laughed, catching the other's attention as Yusei paused mid brush to look at him with a hum, "We're lucky the city uses the lunar calendar for this holiday, or the festival would've been on your birthday!"

"Ah... you're right," Yusei blinked, laughing a little bit himself once the words registered, "Lucky me, I guess. I don't have to worry about the city being busier than usual on my birthday, nor the days around it."

"I dunno what I'd have done for your party if that were the case," Judai mused, entertaining the thought, "Probably only half of them would've been available to come for the whole day. Actually, now that I think about it, what are Crow and Jack doing tomorrow?"

"Don't ask me, I completely forgot that there was even a holiday tomorrow until you told me," Yusei stated, putting away the brush with a slight sigh before coming over to Judai once again and offering a hand up, "I'd guess that Jack is hanging out with Carly, though."

"Makes sense, but what about Crow then...?" Judai wondered before shaking his head, grabbing the offered hand with a grateful grin, "I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end, does it?"

Yusei hummed in acknowledgment, using the grip he now had on him to pull him into a nice, warm bear-hug that just made Judai regret crawling out of bed already, "We'll just ask them."

As Judai stood there, letting his hands roam a little as he enjoyed the peaceful moment, he started thinking about what kind of yukata to get for Yusei. Should he get a patterned one? A plain one?

He wanted to make sure he got it right after going over as many choices as he could, because he really wanted to see Yusei dressed up in a nice yukata - Judai was sure he'd look just as wonderful in it as all the other things he'd found for him to wear.


	219. Tanabata Festival

_**8/7/19**_

It took a little bit of time and help from Judai for Yusei to figure out how to put on the clothing he'd been given the next day, but seeing Judai's satisfied smile afterwards was well worth the trouble.

"You look amazing," Judai stated, moving back and around him a bit as he glanced over him and nodded to himself, "I knew blue and gold would be a good fit."

"It feels... _weird_ ," Yusei said, taking a few steps and moving his arms around experimentally - he wasn't used to more open clothing like this, even if the parts that were covered were layered pretty well, and he felt a little awkward with how exposed he felt. Still, he figured he'd get used to it pretty quickly since the collar didn't really fall much lower than his usual shirts did and that was the main thing bothering him.

He liked the sleeves, though. It reminded him of his lab coat and the hoodie Judai had given him... something about the baggy sleeves was just comforting, though he couldn't place why.

"You'll get used to it in a little bit, I remember feeling that way the first time I wore one, too," Judai replied, grabbing his own set of clothing before pushing him out of the bathroom, "Now shoo, I want to surprise you with this one."

"As if the gold gears on mine wasn't surprise enough," Yusei chuckled, complying easily and taking a seat on the bed while he waited for the other to get ready, "Aren't the decorations supposed to be flowers or something like that?"

"Yusei, we're probably two of the least traditional people ever," Judai laughed, his voice only slightly muffled behind the door.

"True enough," he conceded, letting silence fall for a bit afterwards.

Finally the door cracked open and Judai stepped out; Yusei felt his thoughts creak to a halt for that first second, eyes immediately drawn first to the dark red of the yukata before looking up at the little flower accessory Judai'd attached to his hair - it complemented the outfit and his hair well, and overall, he looked stunning.

"You look wonderful," Yusei smiled softly, walking over and gently touching a few of the cords hanging from the flower in the other's hair before teasing, "No flowers for me, though?"

"I have another that's the right color, but it'd take a long time to get it to stay in your hair," Judai admitted, his entire face brightened from the compliment Yusei gave him, "Those spikes of yours may fit you well, but they're not very good for any kind of hair accessories... unless, y'know, you wanna hang something from them."

Yusei gave him an exasperated look, but found himself grinning anyway, "I don't actually think you could hang something from them, it's not like they're stuck in place or something. It's still hair and it'll sink due to gravity."

"Guess I'll just have to try it out with lights around Christmas time," Judai shrugged.

Yusei couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it, "Sure, why not? Just don't be too upset when it inevitably doesn't work."

It took a few more minutes, but soon enough they were ready to go and out the door, the event only being a few minutes walk away. The sun was already down and the lights were all lit up, stars dotting the sky above as they finally reached the booths.

Yusei was in slight awe at how many streamers and decorations there were, strung up between and around the booths and overhead. It was very pretty and he was glad Judai had insisted on going to it, even if it was only for a little while because of work obligations.

On another note, he felt significantly more secure in his clothing when he saw that a _lot_ of other people were also wearing some form of yukata, and the little bit of worried tension he'd been holding melted away and left him relaxed.

"There's a lot of stuff to do and food to eat, but considering we already ate dinner we should probably start with a few of the games," Judai mused, playing a little with their interlocked hands as they slowly walked around to get a feel for where things were, "Just not the goldfish one. I'm a little uh... worried Pharaoh might try to eat it if we manage to scoop one up."

"I thought about that one, too," Yusei admitted, admiring the atmosphere a little more before something caught his eye, "There's a shooting game over there."

He ended up winning Judai a fancy little fan as a prize for beating the game, and as they went about trying a couple more of the games, it ended up getting used a lot. Being in such a packed crowd, despite having room to walk, meant that the temperature was a bit too high to be comfortable.

They ended up calling it quits after around an hour or so, picking up some taiyaki for dessert from one of the street food booths towards the edge of the grounds so they could quickly find a bench outside in the much cooler air to eat at.

"This is really good," Yusei mumbled, enjoying the light sweetness from the traditional red bean one he'd picked. It wasn't as sweet as he'd expected it to be after seeing a lot of the other snacks and desserts around that tended to have a glaze or something on them.

Judai hummed in agreement, leaning on his shoulder as he munched away at his own, which was a chocolate version of it. They ended up trading halfway through so they could try both types, and they ended up being equally delicious.

He heard Judai say something quietly to himself and looked down curiously, nudging the other lightly with a raised brow to show that he hadn't heard what he'd said.

"Hm? Oh, I was just thinking that this was a good spot - there's supposed to be fireworks in, ah-" Judai paused, checking his phone quickly and wincing a little at the brightness from the screen, "-about three minutes, actually."

"I like fireworks," Yusei said, glancing up at the stars in the sky for a moment before looking back at Judai with a smile, "Used to be able to see them across the water growing up, so I'm pretty fond of them."

Judai didn't reply, but the way he threaded their arms together and hugged him tightly before giving him a quick, sweet kiss was enough for him as an answer.

They stayed happily silent as the show began, watching the first few fireworks bloom in the sky with loud whistles and booms before they spoke up and started pointing out their favorite ones.

"Ooh, that red one with the gold flecks was pretty," Judai grinned up at him, causing Yusei to look away from the sky for a little bit to take in the sight. The colors and lights from the fireworks lit up Judai's body and eyes, and Yusei carefully observed and memorized the scene, mesmerized for a bit by the other.

"My favorite's still the big gold one that took a long time to fade away afterwards," Yusei replied, humming once he was fully satisfied and looking back up at the sky to watch the rest of the show. At some point a bunch of duel monster-shaped fireworks were launched, which they had a nice laugh at because a few of them ended up looking rather hilarious and distorted for some reason, but by the end of the finale they were ready to walk around again because it'd gotten a bit cold sitting on the bench.

"One last thing, then we can go home and sleep," Judai stated, swinging their arms a little as he tugged him along to a section of the festival that they'd skipped beforehand for later - it was the wish tag section, with a bunch of decorative bamboo plants around and tag-making tables set up, "Can't skip this, this is the main attraction. Tanabata is a Star Festival and for making wishes, after all."

"Now that I think about it, didn't the quest we completed in DDO give us the title 'Star-Crossed Lovers'? That's from the legend this festival is based off of, right?" Yusei remembered, looking over the selection of papers before them on the table and the different colored pens, "Seems a bit odd that they'd give the top Tag-Duel team such a title, considering in the legend the lovers can't even see each other except for one day of the year."

Judai paused, giving him a studying glance before picking out his paper and pen and uncapping it, "Well, maybe they just needed an interesting two-person story and it was the first thing they thought of."

"That's probably the most likely scenario," Yusei agreed, finally settling on a white tag that had a night sky border around it and a simple black pen to write with. He frowned for a second, trying to think of a wish to write.

He didn't find himself wishing for much, to be honest. He only really wished for material things when it came to his D-Wheel and other tech parts, but for the most part he was pretty content getting by as long as the people he cared about were safe. If there was one thing he could hope for, though, it would have to be...

 _...Yes, that will work_ , he determined, smiling a little to himself as he wrote it down.

"You ready?" Judai asked, pulling him along to a free spot once he got a nod in confirmation, "Here, how's this? We can put them right next to each other, then."

They hung them, their wishes on the side facing away from them while their names were on the side they could see. Yusei was a little curious to see what Judai had written on his, but he knew the whole point was to not tell it, so he didn't look.

As they started walking home, Judai tugged slightly on his hand to get his attention, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face before being replaced by a confident smile, "If you think about it, we managed to cross a hurdle that the couple in the legend couldn't - if you replace the river they see each other across with time, that is."

Yusei gave him a surprised glance, blinking as the words registered in his mind before he smiled softly and stopped, pulling Judai to him so he could hold both his hands, "I'm glad we did. I can't imagine a life without you, Judai." The world felt like it had stopped around them, and with all of his focus on Judai and the rare, shy look on his face that was complemented by his current outfit, he didn't even try to resist the urge to lean down and steal a slow, sweet kiss.

 _I hope he stays safe and learns to love himself a little more. I hope I can always be there for him._

Little did he know, but he and Judai had written the same wish.


	220. Revenge Calls

_**8/8/19**_

Judai had a lot of things he needed to get done - well, _could_ get done, not necessarily needed in some cases. He _needed_ to go back to the castle and figure out how it was running and do a lot of maintenance, and he _needed_ to go set up some more wards and alerts in some places, but other than that, things like practicing his baking skills and doing hobbies weren't time sensitive.

Thus, he was very, very bored, because he wanted to explore his land with Yusei first before really going through and figuring out the situation with that and the wards would take maybe half a day to do, so he was procrastinating on it. He really just wanted to hang out with Yusei and goof off more than anything else, but of course, the other had work to get done and he didn't want to make him stress out by insisting that they hang out.

For whatever reason, his usual activities just weren't appealing that day and he had a restless sort of energy that he couldn't figure out how to get out of his system. So, in light of this, instead of complaining to Yusei, he complained to Carly.

 _ **HERO:**_ _im boredddddd_

 _ **HERO:**_ _help me pls_

 _ **Glasses Girl:**_ _Didn't you say you were going to practice your dessert skills? What happened to that?_

Judai would never cease to find it amusing that Carly typed proper sentences when texting, mainly as a result of constantly writing professional articles. She'd stated that it was also so she didn't fall into any bad habits and start messing up on accident when having to write said articles as well.

 _ **HERO:**_ _not feelin it_

 _ **Glasses Girl:**_ _What about DDO? You guys have been playing that less and less recently, y'know. I'd get a good article out of you guys doing something in that again._

It wasn't that they didn't want to play, either... it was just that with Judai having duties that he was starting to have to upkeep once again and Yusei having to work overtime to try and solve the reactor issue, they didn't have the time for it; when they did have the time, though, they spent it doing other things that were far more appealing to them at the moment due to being tired. They mostly just logged in nowadays to play a duel or two before running off to a nice, isolated section of the world to hang out and enjoy the view.

 _ **HERO:**_ _dont worry, we still do the major events at least, so youll probably get one soon_

 _ **HERO:**_ _anyway, how was yesterday for you? didnt you go to the festival with jack?_

 _ **Glasses Girl:**_ _oh my god AHHHHHH THAT'S RIGHT_

Carly was using improper grammar? Judai was very interesting to hear about what'd happened now, though from her reaction he was pretty sure he could come up with a very educated guess.

 _ **Glasses Girl:**_ _HE FINALLY DID IT WE'RE DATING! He was so embarrassed too, it was great! Stupid man thought I didn't know he was avoiding me for a while there, I'm not an ace reporter for nothing._

 _ **HERO:**_ _good for you guys! does this mean i can finally tease him about it?_

 _ **HERO:**_ _he didnt tell us a thing yet, but then its barely been a day since it happened last night so i guess that makes sense_

 _ **Glasses Girl:**_ _I'd wait for him to tell you, but if he doesn't do it by the end of the week it's free game. At that point I'd start teasing him about it, too._

"Oh Yusei!~" Judai sang happily, standing up quickly from the couch and giving the other a shit-eating grin when he looked up from the paper he was reading over, "Our time for revenge has arrived, dear!"

Yusei immediately perked up at that, putting the paper down and turning fully to look at him with a curious hum, "Oh really? On who?"

"Jack," Judai stated, putting the phone away after double-checking it and seeing a message from Carly saying that she had to go, "He finally got together with Carly last night during the festival. I've been given express permission to do my worst if he doesn't tell us by the end of the week."

"Knowing him, we'll get our chance then," Yusei replied, a mischievous glint entering his eyes as they narrowed to share a playful look with him, "What're we going to do?"

"Not sure yet. We need to plan," Judai said, pursing his lips as he thought about it before shrugging with a grin, "We've got 'til the end of the week, we're good on time."

"True," Yusei agreed, glancing back at his papers before turning back to him with a considering look, "For now though, while you're here, could you help me with something? It'll make this go a lot faster. Only if you're not busy, of course."

"I was actually getting really bored," Judai admitted, excited that he could actually help Yusei out a bit and take some of the burden off his shoulders for a little, "I'd love to help, just tell me what to do."

And so he was tasked with turning on his ability to see duel energy and telling and showing him the paths and behaviors it took up when going between two machines he had with different settings, because it was much faster than it would be if Yusei had to figure it out solely from the data collected. He ended up helping him the rest of the day, too, and Judai couldn't help but offer to help him out in any way he needed the next few days as well while they ate dinner.

The sooner Yusei finished, the sooner he'd be able to drag him with him to the castle, after all. Plus, it'd be a good way of making the time pass faster while waiting for Jack's time limit to run out, and it'd be nice because even though it was work, Judai would ultimately still be getting to spend all that time with Yusei.

He would never _not_ love spending time with Yusei, and to his relief, him being at his side and helping seemed to ease some of the stress Yusei always seemed to have whenever it came to work and his colleagues.


	221. Breakthrough

_**8/9/19**_

"I just can't figure this out," Yusei groaned, finally tearing his eyes away from the plethora of numbers and diagrams in front of him, scattered between papers on the desk and two monitors. He was half sure that if he stared over them for another minute or two he'd start developing a migraine - it was just bugging him so much that he couldn't find even a small lead.

He just needed one indicator. _One_ , but the world was _not_ working with him when it came to the old duel energy that was absolutely plaguing him at this point.

"We've only been at it for a few days," Judai tried to reassure him, shifting next to him for a second before Yusei felt a warm pair of arms wrap around him in a hug, "This is the kind of thing that takes a long time."

"It hasn't just been a few days though," Yusei retorted, letting his head flop forwards into the other's shoulder tiredly, "I've been trying to figure this out for _months_ at this point. You'd think I'd have found something out - hell, you'd think _someone_ on the whole _team_ that's working on this would find something out, but nothing's _working_." He didn't even care that his glasses were getting prints all over them from getting skewed and pressed against his face as he buried his head as far as he could; he really needed the comfort Judai was giving him right now.

"Let's take a break, okay? You're gonna burn out at this rate," Judai sighed, pulling back a bit and gently taking his glasses from him to put safely to the side.

"Okay," Yusei mumbled, not even trying to protest. Even if he wanted to get back to work, the rational part of his brain knew that it was for the best right now.

"How about we go upstairs for a bit?" Judai suggested, though he wasn't given much of a choice in the end because Yusei found himself being tugged up and away up the stairs.

He didn't mind, really. In fact, lying in bed and thinking about literally anything except work sounded fantastic at the moment.

After they both got settled in, with Judai managing to somehow wrap himself comfortably around Yusei, he asked, "Can you just... talk about something for a bit?"

Judai hummed, resting his head on top of his and starting to slowly run fingers through his hair as he replied, "M'kay... I was going to keep it a surprise, but I don't mind it not being one. Remember when we were talking about date ideas and stuff?" Yusei simply nodded in confirmation, which prompted him to continue, "Well, remember how I said I had somewhere I wanted to take you and how it'd be an all day thing? That place is my little part of the spirit dimension."

That caught Yusei's attention, especially since he vividly remembered that day where Judai spilled everything that'd happened to him in that realm. It wasn't something he thought he'd _want_ to show him, not with the tears and guilt he'd revealed to him while telling his story.

He looked up curiously, very confused by the tiny, happy grin that Judai was sporting as he looked down at him in return.

"I know, right? Sounds weird and feels weird to say, but imagine my surprise when I stopped by there the other day and the whole place was _green_ ," Judai explained, a slight sparkle to his eyes that made Yusei smile as well at the other's clear excitement, "The whole place was _thriving_ , Yusei! There were trees, colorful flowers, pathways carved out for people to travel on... I could hardly believe what I was seeing. That barren wasteland I told you about was practically _gone_. It's amazing, and I wanted to explore it with you."

"I'd love to," Yusei laughed, infected by the other's giddiness at this point, "And the castle? Did it change?"

"The interior's a bit cleaner and more well-lit, and the garden is completely fixed up - that's where I got all those fruits and vegetables and stuff the other day while you were at Starlight Junktion," Judai answered, "There's a little section of the garden that's perfect for hanging out, so I wanted to have lunch or somethin' there, too. I actually picked up a special duel monster recipe book while I was at the Aromages' store and most of the stuff the recipes call for are in that garden, so I wanted to try my hand at a few."

"Anything you cook ends up being good," Yusei stated, cuddling back into him as he thought about what the castle must look like. Hell, he was just curious to see what a spirit world specific to Judai would be like-

...Spirit world?

Yusei cut his thought off as another popped up, focusing on the sudden idea and trying to figure out why it was important.

"I'd hope so, I've practiced quite a-"

"Wait. Hold on."

Judai let out a questioning noise, looking down at him a bit in confusion, but luckily took the hint and stayed quiet so he could think.

 _When we went to the twins' and helped Jasmine, Judai said something about duel energy_ , Yusei thought, mind reeling as he could practically _feel_ some of the dots connecting, _It was denser... in the spirit dimension. That's what he said, right?_

He'd said something about it dispersing when it was returned back to an atmosphere with similar denseness as well - if he could somehow apply that to old duel energy at the reactor, like say, figure out a way to get it into a similarly dense area in the spirit dimension...

That could be it. Judai had also said it felt like an area of war, _in the spirit dimension_ , so theoretically, if he could somehow make it all go to a war-torn area of one of the spirit worlds, then his problem would be solved without having a negative impact on anything else.

It was a win-win situation if he could figure out a way of transporting it, which was _way_ easier to figure out compared to figuring out how to break it apart using man-made technology. After all, he had Judai to help him with this, and the other was intimately familiar with different parts of the spirit worlds and how to get there.

He'd been thinking about this all wrong, he'd needed to think outside the box the entire time.

"Judai, I've got it," he breathed, pulling back to give the other a frantic, wide-eyed grin, "I think I've got it. We've been going about this the wrong way the whole time, _I've got it_."

Judai blinked at him, but soon had a proud smile on his face that made all the stress leading up to this point worth it, "No time to lose then, let's get to work! Tell me what you figured out."


	222. Study Preparation

_**8/10/19**_

Judai felt a lot like he was doing work with Yugi all over again. Yusei handled the technical side of things, figuring out exactly what he needed to find out, record, test, all of that stuff; Judai, on the other hand, dealt with the spirit world side of things and did whatever Yusei told him to do whenever it came to duel energy.

It was rather nice, to be honest - he'd missed doing stuff like this and he was definitely going to offer his help more in the future.

"I need a _way_ stronger battery," Yusei muttered, squinting at the parts in front of him in concentration.

"What kind? I can run out and go get it or somethin' while you keep going," Judai offered, leaning on the desk slightly next to where Yusei was.

"What time is it?" Yusei asked, putting his glasses back on for a moment to look at the clock, "Six? I'll just put in an order for it at my usual parts place and call Crow to tell him to pick it up on the way back."

"Isn't that place really close to where Jack works?"

"Jack's at Carly's for dinner, remember?"

"Ah, right," Judai blinked, grinning at the reminder. Jack hadn't explicitly told them he was going to be with Carly, of course, but it was pretty easy to guess because really, why else would he tell them he wouldn't be back for dinner?

Speaking of which, he _still_ hadn't told them about finally getting together with her yet, and the end of the week was very near. They'd luckily thought up something for revenge already, so they could work to their heart's content without worrying about it.

"Well, did you need me to do anything else right now or did you want me to go get us some food?" Judai questioned, "I didn't even realize it was six already..."

"Me neither," Yusei sighed, sitting down in the desk chair and looking over the organized chaos on the desk before finally replying, "Well, it's not really pertinent at the moment since I need to get this thing up and running first, so I guess dinner. I've got a few more things to make so this goes as smoothly as possible, too. Start trying to think of some places we could bring the energy to though, preferably we'll have a couple so we have back-ups just in case."

"I can do that," Judai stated, pushing himself up only to almost trip on a random part on the floor - luckily he managed to catch himself by grabbing quickly onto Yusei, letting out a little yelp in surprise.

"Careful," Yusei chuckled, spinning around just enough to be able to tug Judai off-balance so he ended up falling into him instead, "Might just think you're falling for me."

Judai laughed, giving him a grin as he adjusted himself into a more comfortable position on him, "I thought I was supposed to be the sappy one?"

"And I thought you were the one who was supposed to be more aware of his surroundings," Yusei retorted, wrapping his arms around his waist with a smile, "I don't mind it though if it ends up like this. Also, I still say that this is much better than when we're switched around."

"I like both ways," Judai said, leaning down to kiss him for a few seconds before pulling back with a smirk, "Either way, I get you somehow and that's all that matters."

"Yeah, you're the natural sap for sure," Yusei stated in response, rolling his eyes and making Judai laugh before letting him get up, "Alright, off you go. I gotta place that order and call Crow before he leaves his last appointment for the day."

"Yes sir!" Judai grinned, doing a mock salute after standing back up. He got a raised, amused eyebrow in return, which he counted as win before he turned to the corner of the room and called, "Pharaoh, time for dinner!"

The cat was quick to get up and follow him into the kitchen, waiting patiently in the doorway as Judai made sure to watch his step this time so he didn't accidentally trip over anything. They'd made a mess of the living room sorting through various boxes of random parts trying to find the specific ones Yusei needed and simply hadn't bothered to clean up any of it up yet.

Judai had a feeling neither of them were going to sleep that night, considering how easily they'd both been absorbed into figuring out how to make the solution Yusei had thought up a reality, so he made sure to make something light that wouldn't sit heavily in their stomachs - it wouldn't do for them to fall asleep because they were too full, and especially not at such a critical point.

He made a mental note to force Yusei to take a break at some point though to make coffee for both of them. Judai still loved Yusei's coffee more than anything and he was definitely going to need some of it.


	223. All-Nighters

_**8/11/19**_

"Y'know, I knew that you could get invested in this stuff too, Judai, but I hadn't actually been witness to it until now," Crow mused, having decided to hang out downstairs on the couch instead of holing up in his room after he ate dinner with them.

Now that they had the battery and a couple other parts Yusei had decided to order as well, they were able to continue going about making their solution a reality. It was going to take them a couple days, mainly because once they had everything set-up and tested they'd have to pay a visit to the reactor in order to try it for real, and they were eager to work on it as much as needed to make the process go faster.

"Well, to be fair it's not the hard part that I'm helping with," Judai replied, letting his powers fall away for a bit before leaning back in the chair he'd stolen from the kitchen and stretching, "If I were the one having to crack all the numbers nothing would be getting done."

"Still, do you guys even realize that it's already midnight?" Crow retorted, catching both his and Yusei's attention with the question.

"Wait, really?" Judai blinked in surprise, taking a look at the clock himself and realizing with a slight shock that it really was just past midnight, "Shit, where did the time go?"

"We've still got more to work on, I just need to finish putting this next step together... Judai, pass me that bolt to your right, please," Yusei said, clearly not as surprised as Judai had been. He located and handed the bolt over to him, exchanging a smile before Yusei turned back to the absolute mess of metal pieces in front of him.

"Alright, so while Yusei's doing that... Judai, you know what _else_ you guys haven't realized?" Crow continued, a wide smirk crossing his face, "A certain someone hasn't come back yet, and it's _past midnight_."

Judai felt a smirk of his own slowly form on his face as he processed what Crow said, clapping his hands together with a dark laugh, "Just to make sure, you texted Carly to double-check, right?"

"Oh yeah, he's still there," he confirmed, letting out a few dark chuckles of his own, "She was more than happy to tattle on him, and made sure to remind me that we all needed to tease the shit outta him."

"Yusei and I came up with a plan already, you want in?"

"Of course I do, that's not even a question."

"Go explain it to him, it's going to take me at least another ten, fifteen minutes to finish this," Yusei stated, waving him off without looking up from the parts in his hands, "I'll get you more coffee after, then we can test it."

"M'kay then," Judai hummed, getting up and dragging the chair over towards the couch - he really didn't need to, but he didn't feel like shoving Crow's legs off the couch in order to sit down, so he just brought the chair with him, "So, first of all, we're not gonna do it for a few days because we need to focus on what we're working since it's pretty damn important. Just wanted to make that clear."

"I got it, now spill," Crow nodded, sitting up a little and tossing his phone on the table, "Please tell me it involves his duel spirits somehow, too. I still remember how you told me they cheered _against_ him during that one time he and Haou were having one of their spats and it'd be hilarious if you got them in on this."

Well, Judai hadn't actually thought of that before, but it was a brilliant plan and Haou was _very_ approving of adding some last minute additions to make Jack's embarrassment as strong as possible.

" _Rile the bastard up_ ," Haou urged, and Judai could feel that he was feeling just as vindictive as he was, " _He still refuses to acknowledge my superiority, so he deserves every last bit of embarrassment coming his way._ "

 _I'll be sure to tell him that_ , Judai replied back, internally laughing at the continued rivalry the two had. Anything Haou had to say always seemed to trigger some sort of annoyance in Jack, no matter what it ended up being about.

"It involves them now," Judai grinned, leaning forward conspiratorially, "Alright, I'll tell you what we have now then, _then_ you can help me modify it to include the Resonators."

This was going to be even better than he thought it would be, as evidenced by the way their planning ended up going way off the rails and expanding to be way bigger than they'd originally planned. Crow was then tasked with getting stuff ready while Judai went back to helping Yusei (only after getting coffees for all three of them and talking a bit more about the plan with Yusei while he took a break), and all three of them ended up staying up the whole night working.

Thank the gods it was the weekend, because none of them were required to do anything the next day and could sleep in after crashing in bed thanks to coming down from a serious caffeine high.


	224. At the Reactor Again

_**8/12/19**_

It was on short notice, but luckily they managed to get Johan to come with them to the reactor the next day. It was late in the afternoon considering they'd slept-in until around one o'clock, but it worked out anyway because they'd rather do it in the dark when there was less risk of someone questioning what they were doing.

It was just easier to not have to explain to anyone why there was a portal to another dimension in the middle of the area.

"Your theory sounds pretty solid," Johan stated, looking distractedly over the machines Yusei had brought and started setting up, "Tech looks good too, and- wait, is that a momentum threader? Holy shit, you're pulling _no_ stops with this."

"I don't like pulling stops in general," Yusei replied, gesturing idly towards Judai as he focused, "Show him the final logs, have him give it a triple-check."

"Will do," Judai grinned, glad to finally have something to do - he was already on full alert again because of the energy, just like the last time, and he needed something to focus on himself so he could distract himself from the feeling. If he didn't, he was going to get way too antsy again; at least the idea of finally getting rid of the stuff made him feel better.

He flipped open the laptop after pulling it out of one Yusei's various bags he'd brought, easily navigating through a couple windows after becoming intimately familiar with the layout of it last night. He turned it wordlessly towards Johan, sitting down on the D-Wheel and watching over Johan's shoulder while the other scrolled through the results of their testing, pointing out various details in the mean time.

"Is there any way to decrease the variance of that particular variable?" Johan frowned, pointing to one particular column of the screen, "I'm sure you guys already noticed, but it fluctuates a lot. Other than that, everything else looks fine."

"That's the placing of the portal when I open it," Judai muttered, frowning as well at the reminder, "It kept changing where it opened, even when I tried my best to make sure it was in the same place. We even tried using a new method we figured out - basically, you can summon portals to places by using a field spell card the same way you'd materialize a monster or spell, but even then the opening point would change just enough to be noticeable."

"Could you use one of your duel monsters as an anchor point? I'm not sure exactly how you'd go about setting them as one for the field spell, but it'd make sense if you could somehow," Johan mused.

Both Judai and Yusei stared at him in slight shock before sharing a look of disbelief.

"Of course it's that simple," Yusei groaned, laughing a bit before getting back to setting-up, "Judai, try it. Tell one of your HERO's to go stand in an open square or something and not move, then focus on them when you're using Skyscraper."

"Alright. Johan, I am _so_ glad we had the foresight to bring you with us for this," Judai stated, opening the portal first and telling the first HERO he saw, which turned out to be Avian, the plan and closing it again once the other was in place, "Test one, here goes somethin'..."

He opened the portal again, making sure to focus on opening it where Avian was, and cheered a little when it opened right in front of him, "Well, that part works - now we just have to see if it's consistent. Johan, grab the chalk in the bag, it's in the outside pocket."

"Ah... got it."

"Mark the ground at the very bottom middle of the portal, please."

"Done."

"Okay, time for the real test then," Judai said, taking a deep breath when he closed the portal before focusing and opening it again.

Sure enough, after glancing down at the ground, he saw the chalk mark was once again right in the bottom middle of the portal opening, which meant that it hadn't moved at all. Their single variable that they hadn't been able to keep consistent was officially declared fixed after a few more tests for good measure.

"Well then, time for the real deal," Judai grinned, feeling a little giddy about it possibly succeeding, "Yusei, you almost done over there?"

"Just got a couple more things," Yusei called back, not looking up from the two wires in his hands. Judai could see that he was also sporting a little smile though, so he knew he was pretty damn excited about this as well.

"Y'know, now that I'm really looking at this thing... this is pretty revolutionary stuff right here," Johan mentioned, having gone back to looking at the laptop while Judai was finishing his testing.

"Really?" Judai blinked. He knew it was pretty interesting in concept, considering it required quite a bit of specific requirements that most people wouldn't be able to fulfill - hell, he and Yusei were probably some of the _only_ people who could fulfill them. He hadn't thought that it was necessarily _revolutionary_ , though.

"Dude, if you guys put out a research paper on this thing it'd make quite a few waves," Johan stated, tapping the screen for emphasis, "If you do think about making one, just tell me and I'll do what I can to help you out."

"We'll think about it," Yusei piped up, suddenly standing and brushing the dirt off his pants before turning them with a determined smile, "For now though? It's go time."


	225. Theory Success

_**8/13/19**_

"It worked," Judai breathed, the sound being the best thing Yusei had heard in days, "I-it's gone."

"For sure?" Yusei double-checked, but even he could see the readings in front of him, which seemed to back up Judai's claim pretty easily thanks to the lowered numbers around the board.

Judai let the portal he'd been holding open fade away, turning to him a giddy smile that Yusei found himself matching before he knew it, "For sure! Yusei, you're a freakin' _genius_."

"No kidding," Johan agreed, checking over a few of the machines as they finished processing before being shut off, "I still don't get how you managed to program one of these to be able to read aspects from the spirit dimension, considering how wonky the duel energy can apparently get there... according to Judai, at least."

"Pretty much."

"I applied some of the concepts my duel monsters taught me about when they were showing me all their creations," Yusei explained, not _feeling_ like he'd really done much but _knowing_ in his head that he'd accomplished something unprecedented (at least, in this world, that is). If it hadn't been for that time spent with his spirits, tinkering away and making a whole plethora of little projects just because they were able to, he highly doubted he'd have ever been able to figure out everything the way he had.

The main issue he'd encountered, after all, had been the action of actually moving the old duel energy - it was dormant but had the potential to be volatile, as Judai had essentially stated (and he trusted Judai's word on this kind of stuff), so he needed to be extra careful figuring out the safest way to move it.

Of course, that came after figuring out how one manages to move an energy that's not tangible yet seemingly has a mind of its own in the first place. That particular hurdle was one that required some consulting and idea bouncing with his duel spirits in the end, but finding the solution to it - in this case, fashioning a kind of 'magnet' for duel energy that would latch onto it and lure it to wherever it was - made the entire project feel a million times easier to deal with.

They did another two tests just to make sure it wasn't a fluke at all, and they all cheered when they successfully got the same result. They wouldn't be able to clear out all of the duel energy today, considering Yusei needed to compile a report first on what they'd figured out since it was pretty much the sole project everyone at his work was stuck with, but it'd succeeded and that was all they needed to be satisfied.

"Explaining how you figured this out is going to be pain, y'know," Johan realized as he helped them pack everything back up into Yusei's various bags, "If you want, I can send you some of my own research that's been published and you can try to spin off of it and a few other things."

"That'd be great," Yusei nodded, having come to the realization the second he thought about having to tell his work about it, "Hopefully they won't question it too much, though, because it works and it relies on a lot of ideas that simply haven't been used in any way before this."

"If you need me to, I could come in and provide a bit of proof by showing off that I'm a psychic duelist," Judai offered, though Yusei was quick to shut that idea down.

"No, you are _not_ doing that," Yusei frowned, turning to give him a stern look and a pointed finger, "The last thing you need to do is put more attention on yourself than you already have been doing with the tournaments."

"I... Yeah, I see where you're comin' from," Judai sighed, pouting a little but mainly out of principle, "Better to be safe than sorry, right?"

"Exactly," Yusei smiled, shoving the bag he'd finished packing into his arms, "Now here, go find a space for it in the storage compartment."

"Got it!" Judai grinned, easily bouncing back from the small moment and looking like he was two seconds away from skipping as he walked away.

Johan caught his attention with a low whistle and a pat on the pack, laughing quietly, "Damn, you've really got him whipped."

"I wouldn't say _that_ ," Yusei replied, feeling a little embarrassed but laughing as well at the notion, "Well, okay, maybe a little, but it's two-fold."

"I've never seen him concede to a point like that so fast in my life - I'd say he's _more_ than a little whipped," Johan reiterated, patting him on the back with a chuckle again before moving back to packing, "Either way, I'm sure he's still had the same issues as last time, so I guess what I said last time applies here, too. Make sure to take his mind off of the bad stuff!"

Yusei felt rather proud of himself for not getting as flustered as the first time, managing to get out an irritated, embarrassed grumble this time instead of a stuttered, high-pitched retort.


	226. Feeling Better

_**8/14/19**_

Judai felt... _antsy_ , more than anything else by the time they got back to the apartment. It was almost ten in the evening at that point, and they'd eaten before they left, so all they needed to do was unpack and unwind; maybe eat some dessert if they felt like it, which Judai was kind-of starting to feel on the way back.

It was overshadowed by his instincts flaring again, though - it may have been appeased somewhat thanks to their success and the reassurance that the reactor would be clean by the end of the month, but he was still very alert. He could tell just how on-edge he was by the way he latched on to Yusei on the way home, not bothering to tease him like he usually would do and instead just reveling in the warmth and closeness.

"Judai, we're back," Yusei said softly, turning in his grip as much as he could to look at him, "You okay?"

"Let's just get the stuff in fast," Judai stated, taking a deep breath and tightening the hug one last time before prying himself off of him, "...I will be though, don't worry."

Yusei hummed, sending him a smile that helped him calm down a bit as he unlocked the storage compartment and hauled all the bags out, handing a couple to the other before slamming the door shut again and re-locking it. He wasted no time getting to the apartment, dropping the bags carefully onto the desk table and patiently waiting for Yusei to free himself of bags as well before latching onto him once again.

"I love you," Judai murmured, instantly feeling a little better from the contact. He buried his head into Yusei's shoulder, leaning it towards his chest more and letting the rise and fall of it soothe him.

"Love you too," Yusei chuckled, returning the hug and asking, "You hungry at all? We have ice cream."

"Are you?"

"A little."

"Then we're getting ice cream," Judai decided, more focused at the moment on Yusei's feelings and wants than his own. Well, more than usual at least - he usually was pretty good at balancing it, but with his head being a little fuzzy and his mind wired to be over-protective right now, he didn't give a shit about what he himself wanted beyond 'Yusei is safe and happy.'

"Come on, hold onto my arm for a bit, okay?" Yusei said, nudging his arms around his waist slightly, "I can't really walk like this, and eventually I'm going to need two hands free."

"Fine," Judai huffed, not even trying to fight against the suggestion despite wanting to do nothing but drag him down and cuddle him.

Luckily it didn't take too long for him to find the ice cream in the freezer or get out the bowls. Plus, Judai just switched to only hugging his waist when he ended up finally needing two arms to scoop the ice cream out of its container, so he wasn't too affected overall.

In fact, he ended up really liking hugging him from behind like this and wondered why he didn't do it more, so he made a mental note to take more chances to do it, even if it only ended up lasting two seconds before they were facing each other once again. It let him rest his head on his back like a pillow because he was shorter, which felt pretty nice and relaxing to do.

Yusei ended up making the executive decision to just eat upstairs in their room, tripping a little going up the stairs thanks to Judai being wrapped around him so but ultimately managing it just fine.

"Give me the bowls for a second," Judai stated, taking the dessert when given it and putting it on the closest side desk before pulling Yusei down onto the bed. He turned Yusei so he was in his lap, curled up to his chest but still sitting up with his legs hung over his own. Once he was satisfied with the position, he pulled Yusei into a slow kiss, keeping one hand on his face while the other was wrapped behind his back and lightly ran fingers through his hair. He made sure it stayed soft and sweet, doing his best to let his actions prove how much he loved him.

He didn't say anything when he pulled back eventually, brushing some more of Yusei's hair to side before reaching back over and grabbing the ice cream. He happily ate his, content with having Yusei so close and curled up in a way that let him hover over him, and he managed to finally give Yusei an honest, relaxed grin when they caught each other's eyes.


	227. Pastry Morning

**_8/15/19_**

Neither of them had been very tired when they went to sleep, but they'd managed to fall asleep by cuddling close together and letting each other's warmth lull them to sleep. Granted, it was because of this that Judai wasn't very surprised when he woke up easily a couple hours earlier than he usually would; Yusei was still asleep, and he took a bit of time to appreciate his calm, relaxed sleeping face before finally deciding to wriggle his way out of the bed without waking him up.

He figured he could make a nicer breakfast than they'd usually have since he both had the time to do it and they needed to celebrate their accomplishment at finally solving such an annoying issue. He was still over-the-moon about it, and he would continue to be until the end of the month, most likely.

He started up the coffee maker first, making sure it'd be warm and ready for whichever person in the apartment woke up first, before looking through the fridge to see what he had to work with - he eventually settled on making a couple different kinds of filled pastries since the dough would only take an hour of refrigeration after making it, and in that time he could easily make all the fillings while the oven heated up, too.

Pharaoh wandered in as he started to pull everything out, pawing at him quietly to get his attention before jumping up on the counter and meowing.

"Oh, you want your food, huh?" Judai mused, petting the cat for a few seconds before rifling through the cabinets for his food, "Alright, just give me a second. Get off the counter, too, you know you eat on the ground because you're a messy eater."

Pharaoh gave off a sound that sounded vaguely like a grumble, but he jumped off anyway and happily started eating when he put the bowl on the ground a minute later.

It didn't take Judai very long to finish the dough, putting it in the fridge for later and turning his focus to making the fillings instead. He had plenty of options and he eventually settled on apple cinnamon and chocolate - he was in the mood for something sweet, and he knew that Yusei had a bit of a sweet-tooth, even if the other didn't realize it himself.

Yusei ended up being the first one to get up next, entering the kitchen with a yawn and immediately making his way to the coffee machine, as Judai had predicted would happen, "Mornin'... making something? It smells good."

That something, of course, would be the chocolate he was currently melting and mixing together in a pot on the stove. By this point he'd already finished the apple part, which took the most time mainly because of all the skinning and cutting he'd had to do, and once he finished the chocolate an hour would have passed and he could get to putting everything together.

"I am, figured we could celebrate a bit after yesterday," Judai replied, giving him a small, happy smile while continuing to stir, "Baking some pastries, apple cinnamon and chocolate."

Yusei hummed with his own smile, looking a little more awake solely from hearing what he was making, "Can't wait to try them. You want coffee?"

"Yes please!" Judai cheered. Just because he wasn't tired didn't mean he could enjoy the nice, sweet, creamy taste of the coffee that Yusei could whip up - it was still his favorite for a reason.

He thanked Yusei for the drink when he got it, reaching up and giving him a kiss before hugging him for a moment, "Also, good morning to you. It'll be thirty minutes or so before it's ready, so why don't you go get ready for the day?"

"Okay," Yusei stated, pulling him into a significantly lazier morning kiss before downing his coffee and going to make another, "After another cup, though."

Judai laughed at his antics, pulling out all the pans he'd need and expertly starting to shape the pastries out, "Whatever works, it's a lazy morning. It's still pretty early, too."

"Is it? I didn't check the time..."

"It's seven coming up, we normally don't wake up until eight-ish."

"At least our sleep schedule got fixed," Yusei sighed, and Judai heard him pause to take a little sip of his new coffee - evidently he was drinking it slower now that he didn't really need it for the caffeine, "I was worried that us sleeping until the afternoon yesterday would throw it off for a while."

"Well, if we hadn't managed to fall asleep I knew a perfect way to make us tired," Judai grinned unashamedly, taking a peek over at Yusei after and laughing at the deadpan stare he was met with, "Aw, don't look at me like that, you know you love me!~"

"That I do," Yusei conceded, though he was quick to grab his coffee and send him another exasperated look before he left, "I'll be back in a bit, my naughty Kuriboh."

Judai had to pause in making the pastries in order to make sure he didn't cover his face with his flour and powdered sugar-covered hands as he laughed at the name.


	228. Powdered Sugar

_**8/16/19**_

"I'm seriously debating the merit of just... privately asking the higher-ups if I can just deal with it myself," Yusei grumbled, staring dispassionately at the screen in front of him a couple hours later, "It'd be significantly easier than coming up with a plausible way of explaining how I know about the spirit dimension and gates to it. Plus, no one actually _knows_ that I'm a psychic duelist still, so... it wouldn't add up."

"Would they let you?" Judai asked curiously, coming up behind him and leaning on the back of his chair while taking a bite out of one of the chocolate pastries - he'd done a really good job on them, if he said so himself, and everyone had nothing but good things to say about them, so he was feeling pretty good this morning.

He may have put a _little_ bit too much powdered sugar on top at the end, instead of doing a light dust, but it was definitely worth it to see the small, childish grin that crossed Yusei's face for a few moments. He was seriously too cute for him to handle sometimes.

"I'm pretty sure they would," Yusei replied, leaning back and looking up at him with a smile, explaining, "It's not like they don't know about the spirit dimension, it's just that they tend to shove it to the back of their heads 'cause there's nothing they can do with the information. There's no solid way for them to implement anything and they don't particularly like the idea of using psychic duelists because of all the extra variables that brings in. In this case, because it's a one-time thing and I'm already known for interacting with a couple psychic duelists, I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to pass it off to me to handle privately."

"Well, then first try that," Judai agreed, pausing before his next bite and instead holding it up in front of Yusei with a grin, "Want a bite?"

"Of course I do, these things are evil," Yusei muttered, making him laugh while he took a bite. It happened to be in a spot where there was a lot of powdered sugar stacked up on top of it, so when he did so he ended up getting a bunch of it on his face thanks to it poof-ing up.

Judai seized the opportunity, quickly leaning down and licking a bit off his cheek before finishing it off with a peck to the lips, teasing, "Got a little somethin' there, love."

"I'd like to see you eat powdered sugar and not get messy," Yusei huffed, but his flustered face was adorable and the tiny little glare he got was ruined because of it. He attempted to wipe his cheek off, but Judai was quick to stop that by grabbing the hand and leaning down close again.

"Ah ah ah, take another bite," Judai grinned, feeling more playful than usual because he was in such a good mood, "Can't have you wiping it off, otherwise I don't get to have my fun."

"I already had two this morning..."

"And now you get to have three and _me_!~"

Yusei sighed, but ultimately gave in and took another bite, getting a bit more powdered sugar on his face again to Judai's delight. Slowly his face turned hotter as Judai kept giving him kisses, and it took a long time for them to finally finish the food.

By the end of it all Judai was _very_ satisfied, managing to steal some of the sweetness of the pastry through the kisses and purposefully dragging them out sometimes so Yusei had to suffer longer from not being able to wipe his cheek off from the couple of licks he'd give it every once in a while. They both ended up laughing after they were done, though Judai found himself running back up the stairs to the room and barely managing to not trip over the cat when Yusei got a gleam to his eyes that spoke of clear revenge.


	229. Peaceful Sleep

_**8/17/19**_

Since all Yusei was doing involved typing up word documents explaining what he was doing, alongside drafting out a long-winded e-mail that would essentially boil down to 'Let me do this thing and then forget this whole thing even happened, please', he finally made good on a promise he'd made to himself a while ago and worked on the couch instead of at the desk.

Judai was _very_ happy to say the least, and was quick to situate himself in a comfortable position to both hug him while being able to use his phone. In fact, he was so content that he'd somehow managed to fall asleep despite the fact that Yusei knew both of them were anything but tired that day - his phone had fallen out of his hand onto his stomach, his head had slumped further into Yusei's lap, and Pharaoh joined him in being lazy by curling up and falling asleep on his feet.

Very slowly, Yusei fished his phone out of his pocket and took a couple pictures before deciding to just leave the phone out so it wasn't digging into his hip anymore. With a little sigh, he smiled softly down at the other, taking a few moment to lightly thread his fingers through his hair and just take in his sleeping face.

It was, somehow, even more peaceful than usual. Yusei very vividly remembered looking at him half a year ago and being relieved to see a peaceful look on him, but now he could see that even back then it was tinted with a bit of stress and tiredness. Now the little bits of tiredness, like the marks under his eyes and the ever-so-slight tenseness to his brow, were mostly gone and it made him seem more alive than before.

It made him happy. Based off everything Judai had told him, he could only assume that the reason for the change was because the other finally felt secure enough somewhere to not only stay for a long period of time, but to also call home. The other may not have said it outright, but Yusei could connect the dots together after awhile and... Judai hadn't had a place he thought of as 'home' for years, it seemed. The dorms clearly didn't count, he'd told him about his parents being gone for most of his life and the empty house that resulted because of it, and he'd traveled non-stop for years barring the few months he'd spent with Yugi.

Judai mumbled a little, turning slightly but calming back down easily enough when Yusei softly brushed a bit of hair behind his ears. He went back to working once he was sure the other was still fast asleep, though he was a bit distracted by some of the ideas popping into his head all of a sudden about what to do for Judai's birthday.

It was soon, after all - he hadn't forgotten that it was August thirty-first, and to be honest, he was actually pretty sure Judai was as reserved about birthdays as he was. He _seemed_ to be the type that would enjoy a huge party with all his friends, but he knew the real Judai, and the real Judai was a lot more down-to-earth and didn't do well with having to socialize with large amounts of people for a long time, even if they were all good friends of his. It was something they shared, and they couldn't do anything to help it beyond slipping out unnoticed somehow for a few minutes to recharge, but even that was difficult to find an opportunity to do.

For now though, he'd worry about what to get him as a present. Yusei didn't think it would be very hard to do - Judai had a lot of different hobbies, after all, and he could find things he could get him for just about any of them - but he wanted it to stand out somehow.

 _I wonder how he'd react if I bought flowers for him_ , Yusei mused to himself, taking another glance down at his sleeping boyfriend, _He'd probably get a little embarrassed, then say something about how it'd be 'perfect to put in so-and-so place' to add color._

Which, to be fair, was a very valid point when one took a look around the apartment. There weren't exactly any pictures on the walls, everything was some sort of brown, tan, or grey, and the only things that really stood out colorfully were the stuffed plushies on the couch and the kitchen, since it was filled with eye-catching food products and various colored towels and cooking utensils.

...Hmm, maybe he was onto something with that line of thinking. Nodding to himself, he made a note for later on one of his many text file reminders he kept on his desktop - it wouldn't do to forget was he was thinking about if he thought it had the potential to become his future plan.

Before he went back to work, he leaned down and stole a quick kiss from Judai, chuckling a bit in amusement about the sub-conscious way Judai smiled a tiny bit in response before digging further into his lap.


	230. Revenge Success

_**8/18/19**_

That night, they all finally sprung their plan into action - it'd been pushed off a few days thanks to the reactor tests and Yusei having to write up his request and reports to go with it, but they all agreed that it was the perfect time to do it.

When Jack got back, they all made sure to look busy, like they weren't planning anything. Judai was still supposedly sleeping on Yusei's lap on the couch, and Crow had stolen the desk to spread out his deck and look over it to see if he wanted to try anything new; there was nothing to indicate that Jack was in for an embarrassing time.

"Welcome back," Crow greeted, waving idly before going back to his cards. Jack simply grunted in response, dropping his bag to the side before making his way to the kitchen.

They sprung into action when he disappeared fully, Crow dragging the desk chair to the middle of the room while Yusei quickly pulled out his phone to keep track of the hidden camera's footage. Judai, on the other hand, used his shadows to move the coffee table in front of the chair, which allowed him to do so silently.

The three Resonators who had appeared in spirit form when Jack returned floated above the kitchen entrance to hide, and once they were in place Judai materialized them and grinned.

He'd gone over what he wanted to say and preach about multiple times, and he knew it like the back of his hand. Granted, he wouldn't be able to follow it _perfectly_ , especially when he'd have to inevitably argue with a very unhappy Jack Atlas and pull off a lot of improv, but it was enough for him to be able to follow and work around.

It helped that both Haou and Yubel had pitched in with their own additions and edits to it as well. Judai knew from experience that they were particularly talented at making this as horrible and embarrassing to listen to as possible.

Jack paused a step out of the kitchen doorway when he came back out, staring at them and thankfully not having anything more than a mug of coffee in his hand - he'd be allowed to drink that, at least, because it'd help make him stay awake.

"...What the hell are you guys doing?" Jack asked carefully, giving each of them a stare that would've seemed scary if it weren't for the fact that all of them knew him well and could see the glint of worry and paranoia in his eyes.

"Come, have a seat," Judai replied smoothly, glancing over and nodding in thanks when Yusei dug out a folding chair out of the closet and opened it for him to sit on.

"And just _why_ should I do that?"

"Don't you want to hear what I have to say?"

"With all of you guys clearly planning something, the last thing I should do is follow what you tell me to do, " Jack scowled, crossing his arms and huffing a bit. He ended up sitting anyways after Judai did nothing but smile and gesture towards the chair again.

"So glad you decided to make this easier!" Judai stated, letting his smile turn into a wild grin as he clapped, which cued the Resonators to reveal themselves.

Chain Resonator secured their chain around Jack within less than a second, successfully keeping him pinned in place while Dark and Red Resonator cackled happily. Whatever they said seemed to irritate Jack, seeing as he was trying to _bite_ at them.

The Resonators, which are pretty much just cloth and metal and in Red's case, fire, continued to chatter rapidly while Dark and Red were quick to pull out their sound instruments and bop Jack in the head lightly, but repeatedly, which made for a hilarious scene.

"I'm sure you're wondering why it's come to this," Judai interrupted before Jack could say anything, and he heard Crow and Yusei snicker to themselves from behind him, " _Well_ , I heard something _very_ interesting earlier this week. _Something_ that you've failed to tell us about." At this point Jack winced, clearly knowing almost instantly what he was talking about, so Judai sighed loudly and leaned forward on his knees, resting his head in his hands with an exaggerated, disappointed frown, "Honestly, if you had just told us before the week ended it never would have had to come to this. But now you have to pay the price."

"You fuckin' bastards," Jack scowled, eyebrow twitching as he glared at Judai before switching his attention to his duel monsters, "Also, you _traitors_! Damn it, why are you helping him?!"

The Resonators laughed happily back at him, saying something that Judai couldn't understand but was clearly enough to rile Jack up more. He'd actually gotten to talk to them a little bit when he'd first invited them into the plan by using Winged Kuriboh as a translator, and they'd pretty much just said that they loved messing with their owner and would be happy to help.

"Considering you got a girlfriend, I came up with the perfect thing to lecture you on," Judai smiled innocently, tilting his head just ever-so-slightly to the side before grinning maniacally, "Allow me to educate you on all manners of the male and female body."

He cackled at the absolute look of horror that spread across Jack's face, gesturing for Yusei to pass him the holo-pad, which had already been set up the way he needed it to be for his following lecture.

He'd been in Jack's position years ago and he never forgot how incredibly mortified he'd been, and he hadn't had anything even close to looking like a romantic partner at the time. He was so, _so_ ready to make someone else go through what he'd had to go through, and his smirk was so wide it made his cheeks ache.

He'd made sure to pass it by Carly too, just to double-check with her that it was something that Jack could handle and wouldn't end up going wrong or something without realizing - she'd know better than any of them and she'd gave him the green light a million times over, saying that she couldn't wait for some clips of it.

Needless to say, he ended up with very good blackmail material a couple hours later, and he'd even gotten a bonus! Yusei and Crow hadn't been able to hide their own embarrassment at hearing what he was talking about a few times, and a couple little nudges on the hidden camera with a wayward shadow picked up on them perfectly. It had sound, too, so he'd be able to know _exactly_ what parts they'd been embarrassed by.

 _Looks like I owe you two, this might as well be a skill_ , Judai thought giddily, still smirking all these hours later and managing to not completely break out into laughter during the entire thing - he'd impressed himself, to say the least.

" _A difficult skill that not many people can capitalize on, so good job_!" Yubel agreed, Haou sending through agreement as well.

To end it all off though, he pulled a box of protection out of the desk drawer that they'd hidden it in just for when Jack finally was allowed to run back to his room, and quickly threw open the door to toss them at him.

"Don't forget these!~" Judai sang, ducking out as fast he could and joining the other two downstairs, who'd grabbed the camera and were already going through the video on Yusei's laptop.

All three of them had to pause to take a nice, long laugh at the highly offended, stuttered yell Jack made a few seconds later.


	231. Lots of Revenge

_**8/19/19**_

Yusei came up with the most brilliant idea that night as they all went to retire to their rooms after scrolling through the footage they'd gotten, and Judai absolute _adored_ him for thinking of it.

"Tomorrow," he started, catching both his and Crow's attention before continuing at a lower tone so there was no way Jack could possibly overhear, "let's act completely normal. He'll _hate_ it if we do that."

They stared at him for a moment before breaking out into huge grins, realizing that he was correct - Jack would indeed hate it if they pretended the whole thing had never happened in the first place, because it would go completely against his expectations for how they'd act afterwards. It was a perfect way of prolonging the sweet taste of revenge they'd gotten from this.

"You brilliant man," Judai stated, Crow snickering in agreement before they all finally separated and went back to their rooms with a quick, excited 'Good night'.

Once they were all finished getting ready and were curled up under the sheets together, he and Yusei shared a satisfied smirk and started laughing quietly.

"He's finally feeling our pain," Judai smiled toothily, threading their hands together tightly in glee, "I'm _so_ glad I came up with that idea."

"I'm glad you did, too," Yusei replied, pecking him on the nose and making him laugh more, "You did really well, good job. If only we could've made it a little more direct though... like how they pretty much walked in on us making out."

"Don't remind me," Judai groaned, burying his face slightly into the pillow with a pout, "I try to forget that happened, y'know. And then they went on to say they'd been waiting for a solid month for us to finally get together! And immediately took pictures! Bastards."

Yusei simply chuckled, letting go of his hand before pulling him close in a hug, "True, but at least we've gotten back at one of them."

"Yeah..." Judai sighed, letting silence fall for a bit before deciding that he wasn't in the mood for the peaceful silence right now. So, of course, he turned to a different topic that made him smirk just at the thought of it.

"So, Yusei," he grinned, looking up from the other's shoulder and teasing, "I noticed you got a bit _red_ on some parts of my very informative speech."

Yusei grumbled, giving him a pleading look and squeezing him a bit tighter in the hug as if it would stop him from saying anything more, "Judai, please..."

"Aw, it's okay, I'm sure I can help you get over your embarrassment about the fact that- mmph," Judai started, getting cut off by Yusei pulling him into a rough kiss to shut him up for a bit. He couldn't help but laugh into it, which only earned him a poke to the side, making him yelp at how it tickled.

"Bad Kuriboh," Yusei stated, looking down at him with a challenging gleam in his eyes that Judai found himself automatically matching as he looked up at him and protected his side with a hand.

He pressed himself closer with a smirk, asking lowly, "Do you really want to try me? I'll win, you know I will."

"If you fight fair, then you won't."

"Since when have I ever fought fair?"

Before he could continue though, he suddenly found his wrists trapped by a hand and any plans he'd been thinking up were scattered as Yusei dug his fingers into his side; Judai was only able to hold back his laughter for a few seconds, but after that he was in tears.

"Y-Yusei-" Judai stuttered out between choked laughs, pulling on his wrists the best he could to try to get out but being weakened by the tickling, "I'm s-sorry-! Mercy-!"

"Nope, this is too much fun," Yusei hummed back, tearing away any hope he had at getting away any time soon as he continued to squeak when he hit a particular sensitive spot, "I wonder, should I move to your neck? Your thigh? I know you're pretty ticklish in those places... if not more so than your side."

He was relentless and the next ten minutes passed in a blur, and Judai swore that this was Yusei's revenge for when he tickled him through the sleeves of his lab coat. On the bright side though, at least he got to enjoy some kisses when he could do more than just lie there and try to catch his breath, his abdomen hurting from laughing so much - granted, they ended up leaving him more out of breath because Yusei managed to coax him into a deeper kiss every time, but that could be forgiven.


	232. Judai's Realm

_**8/20/19**_

"Here we are," Judai said, a happy smile on his face as he entered through the portal he'd torn open with Yusei, "Ah... it's cooler, I'm glad we brought jackets now. It'll be nice to finally enjoy a day that's not filled with blazing heat."

Yusei nodded back, though his attention was immediately drawn to his surroundings - Judai's realm, as he remembered him stating before, was indeed looking like a forest-y plains more than a desolate wasteland. It looked really pretty, actually, especially with the morning sun that was slowly rising into the sky.

His breath caught a little when he finally noticed the castle in the distance, having expected it to be big but not... not _that_ big. It was something right out of a fantasy novel, with the drawbridge and layout, and he couldn't stop staring at it in wonder.

He startled a little when Yubel spoke up next to him, not having noticed that she and Haou had popped up yet, "It's quite the sight, isn't it?"

"That place is _huge_ ," Yusei replied, glancing over with slightly-wide eyes in amazement, "You guys lived there? I can't imagine..."

"It's always populated in some way," Haou stated, looking out with a nostalgic look in his eyes, "Used to be even more so, but that was when there were always soldiers and commanders constantly going through it. Now there's mainly just servants who live there to upkeep it."

" _Butlers_ and _maids_ , Haou," Judai reminded with a grin, taking his jacket off from around his waist and putting it on, "They're paid with more than just food and a bed now, plus half of them actually live in one of the nearby towns. Y'know, with their _family_."

"I know that," Haou grumbled back, giving him a side-eye in annoyance, "We've gone over this how many times?"

"I know, don't worry," Judai replied, "'Servants' has been practically drilled into your brain, it's a hard habit to break after so many years. Still, I gotta tease you about it a little bit."

Yusei shared an amused look with Yubel, asking, "Is this a common thing for them in regards to anything here?"

"Yeah, with all the changes Judai went through and made it's better now, but it's difficult to remember," Yubel said before snickering, "Makes for some funny arguments between them, but Haou always ends up conceding in the end."

"Oi, I can hear you," Haou glowered, crossing his arms defensively before letting out a sigh and starting to walk forwards, "Either way, let's go Yubel."

"We'll see you two later," Yubel waved, following after him immediately and tossing a smirk over her shoulder, "Don't have too much fun by yourselves!"

Judai snorted at that, while Yusei simply gave her an exasperated stare that earned him a bark of laughter before they disappeared down the path.

Judai turned to him with a smile, threading their hands together and asking, "So? Initial impressions?"

"It's beautiful here," Yusei answered, squeezing his hand and taking another look out at the view, "I can only imagine how it'll look a year or two from now when everything's finished growing."

"All the flowers will finish popping up and there'll be color _everywhere_ ," Judai agreed, tugging lightly on his arm to get his attention back, "Well, what'd you wanna do first?"

"I'm the guest here, you tell me," Yusei retorted, raising an eyebrow at him, "You didn't want to tell me anything more, so you're the only who knows what there is to do in the first place." Suddenly he yelped, his weight falling as Judai swept him up into a bridal carry before he could even register that he'd moved, "J-Judai!"

"That look on your face will never get old," Judai hummed, pressing a kiss to his cheek before continuing, "Also, I decided what we're doing first - we're doing a loop of the towns. And you know what the best part is?"

Yusei heard and felt the wings appear more than anything else, only barely managing to see part of a wing past Judai's head before he was hanging on tight and burying his head into the other's chest as he launched into the sky not even two seconds later.

"I can fly as much as I want here!" Judai laughed joyously, letting out a whoop as he stalled in the air for a moment to let Yusei get his bearings.

Once he had, he looked out at the new view, gaping slightly at how expansive the place was - from their position in the sky, he could see at least three of the towns, spread out in a vague circle around the castle, and they were relatively big for towns.

He looked up at Judai, who was looking down at him with an expression of pure happiness at the freedom of the situation, and suddenly they were sharing excited laughs and smiles as they slowly made their way to the closest town, playing around in the air in the meantime.


	233. Title Assignment

**_8/21/19_**

Judai landed them in the middle of the town, gently placing Yusei down on his feet and keeping a hold on him until he was sure he got his balance back. While he did that, the duel monsters in the area all greeted him, giving him a little bow when he looked up and smiled at them.

"W-welcome back, my king!" one greeted, bowing low before them before straightening quickly and adjusting his glasses that were threatening to fall off, "It's been q-quite a while in human years, has it not?"

"It has been... and come on Aleister, I've told you how many times now? It's just Judai, no title necessary," Judai replied, though he knew the duel monster would never switch from calling him 'king' - Aleister the Invoker had been a ruthless leader of the support division of the army before Judai went through and disbanded everything, but you'd never know it now with how often he stuttered and fidgeted shyly.

"I apologize, my king, but- but I simply can't," he sighed, playing with the tome in his hands as he asked, "A-anyway, who's your companion?"

He wasn't the only one wondering, judging from how most of the monsters in the center plaza had stopped what they were doing in favor of looking curiously at them.

Judai tugged Yusei close to him, wrapping an arm around him reassuringly and smiling widely, "This is my lover, Yusei." He didn't have to look up to know that Yusei would probably be lightly flustered from the description, but it was the kind of wording he had to use here - it was accurate for what they were and something that the others would understand.

The language used in various parts of the spirit world tended to vary. His Elemental HERO's, for instance, were modern and understood most of the slang used and why because the place they were associated with, Skyscraper, was a modern city. However, Judai's realm was significantly more on the fantasy side, with a structure that might as well be something right out of an RPG, and as a result commonly used words, like 'boyfriend', wouldn't be understood the way he meant them. In this case, 'boyfriend' would literally just mean 'a friend that is a boy' to them instead of having any sort of romantic connotation to it.

It definitely made for some conversations that he found absolutely hilarious, yet had to laugh about later when he was alone and wouldn't be looked at in confusion while wondering if he was insane.

The positive reception was almost immediate - there was a collective pause before excited chatter popped up all around them, some calling out their congratulations while others simply stared in wonder.

Aleister blinked in surprise, but a happy grin for him quickly formed as he turned to Yusei suddenly and bowed again, "This is- it's wonderful news, it's very nice to meet the one my king has chosen. I'm Aleister the Invoker, but p-please, just call me Aleister."

"It's nice to meet you too," Yusei stated, smiling a bit now that he'd had a moment to let the embarrassment roll off of him.

Judai had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing triumphantly when he noticed how instantly taken each and every one of the monsters in town were with Yusei - that little, soft smile and the nod he'd given to Aleister had endeared him to all of them immediately, with them seeing it as a huge sign of respect and kindness. After all, considering twenty years wasn't all that much for a duel monster, it was only _very_ recently that they'd shoved aside things like status and power in favor of trying to fix their home - they still weren't used to those they considered to be of a high status paying much respect at all to those considered low, especially since Judai'd been out of the picture and couldn't get them used to it.

"My king, and... ah, um-" Aleister stuttered, adjusting his glasses again, "I apologize, but... I feel it will be confusing if I call you both k-king."

Judai shared a glance with Yusei, and upon seeing the permissive smile on the other's face, replied, "Well... every king needs a queen, right?"

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him, but shrugged in agreement easily. Judai had a feeling he wouldn't mind the title since it was just that - a title, and far more accurate than something like 'lord' status-wise; besides, the new, shiny title he'd just handed him had given him a few ideas that he'd tease Yusei about later.

And thus, that was how Yusei officially became a queen.

...Judai was _so_ getting him to wear a dress or something, if only so he could experience it once. Plus, he was one-hundred percent sure Yusei would pull it off, considering just how adorable he often was and how he'd gotten a little less muscly thanks to sitting and working on his laptop for so long without keeping up even a small work-out routine.

 _I'll have to find one soon then_ , he mused, watching fondly as Yusei figured out rather quickly that Aleister was a researcher and pulled him into a conversation about duel energy and the forests around the land (which, apparently, were so quick to form thanks to some of his research on duel energy and plants), _After all, I did promise we'd start doing some form of exercise when it got cooler, and that'll be in a couple weeks probably._


	234. Castle Entrance

_**8/22/19**_

They passed through the towns closest to the castle in a loop, only spending about thirty minutes to an hour in each one. They were rather small, though they spent more time at them in the beginning due to the morning markets being open, which made for quite a few interesting buys. For instance, Yusei managed to find a gear-battery hybrid thing that seemed to store duel energy; he wasn't entirely sure how or why it was in this place, considering it definitely didn't have much modern technology, but he'd gotten it regardless and planned on showing it to his duel spirits the next time he went to Starlight Junktion. They'd probably have a field day figuring out how it worked and what they could apply it to and build.

After they finished, it was around the time for a late lunch so they finally made their way to the castle, which continued to awe Yusei even now - he'd had hours to get used to it being on the horizon, but it had so much more detail as they flew closer that he couldn't help but stare at it.

"It used to look a lot more like a jagged mountain," Judai stated - he must've noticed his stare, "But it turned out that was just a... defensive measure, I guess. Magically induced to protect the actual castle walls from attacks, and you can probably see why."

And he could - the walls were sturdy, but most importantly, they held lots of little, decorative metal pieces and sculptures, which would break far too easily from even just a light attack on the walls.

"It's amazing," Yusei smiled, watching for a few seconds longer before chuckling when he heard his stomach growl, "Guess I'm ready for lunch, huh?"

"Don't worry, I'm the same way," Judai said, laughing a bit as well, "We'll be there in another minute or two if I speed up, so... hold on tight, dear!"

The second Yusei tightened his grip and buried his head into his chest Judai burst forward, and he was suddenly very glad he'd brought not just a jacket, but a wind-breaker jacket. His hands were freezing enough as is, alongside his face, but at least he couldn't feel the lash of the wind anywhere else.

With one last, powerful push of air, Judai landed gracefully on the drawbridge. Yusei felt him kiss forehead to tell him that he'd be letting him down, so he moved his grip to be on the arm holding his back up before letting his feet swing under him; it'd gotten a lot easier after having to do this every time they'd landed in a town so far, plus they established that little bit of a routine they'd fallen into for landing, which helped.

"Thanks," Yusei mumbled, stretching a little and flinching when a light poke hit his side, " _Oi_."

"You know I can't resist when I see the opportunity," Judai grinned happily, holding his hand and walking with him towards the the door to the castle, "Anyway... ready to see something cool? Watch."

When they were only a few feet away, the doors suddenly started opening with a loud creak, revealing a large entryway that had a spiraling staircase and looked to be well-kept.

"See? It automatically opens for me!" Judai chirped, making Yusei laugh at his enthusiasm, "Anyway, to the kitchen! Let's go!"

Yusei let Judai drag him along so that he could spend the walk looking around instead. The ceilings were high, at least on this floor, and every once in a while they'd pass a _huge_ floor height window that had some very pretty, royal purple curtains hanging from the very top of them. The natural light passing through the windows lit the castle up beautifully, and once again, Yusei had to wonder what it was to actually _live_ in a place like this.

"Here we are!" Judai exclaimed, turning to him and pecking his cheek before gesturing behind him to the huge counters and pantries of the kitchen, "It's insane how big it is, isn't it? But I like this 'cause it means I can mess up a recipe and have empty space to move to to start over."

"I'd like to see you somehow use up all the space in here cooking," Yusei teased, earning himself chiming laughter and a hug that he was quick to return, considering he was still a bit cold from the flight there, "Well, what're we making for lunch? Any ideas?"

"Yup! Tea party!"

"A... tea party?"

"Eh... well, kinda, I mean I have all the stuff for it and I figured that since we're pretty hungry, we can make sandwiches and _those_ are tea party foods too if you cut 'em small. And I wanted to try some of the tea leaves that we apparently grow in the garden here, who'd have known?" Judai replied, rubbing the back of his head lightly with a bright grin, "There's a section of the garden that's set up for it, too."

"Ah, so that's why," Yusei hummed, knowing Judai would've seen such a thing (he assumed it was as well-kept as the castle seemed to be) and been instantly in love with the idea - his Kuriboh was such a sappy romantic at heart and he loved it, "You sap. Tea sounds wonderful."


	235. Tea Time

_**8/23/19**_

As it turned out, they didn't have to set up the table area in the garden because... well, as one of the maids and butlers had stopped by to inform them, they'd already set it up for them. Apparently the news had spread fast about Yusei being with Judai and since one of the maids had happened to accidentally overhear them talk about a tea party as she'd been passing by, they'd immediately informed the others to prepare it.

Seriously, with how enthusiastic they were one would think that they were the ones getting ready to do something with a loved one. Still, positive reception was positive reception and Judai would much rather have that than anything else - he didn't know what he'd have done if they hadn't liked Yusei.

...Well, he knew what he'd do, but he'd rather not think about it. That was a mess of a 'what if', and 'what if's were almost never helpful, especially in a situation like this.

At least they didn't try to stop them from making their own food and tea. They knew how much Judai liked to cook, so they tended to do things like setting-up while making things a bit too decorated as a result, feeling like they needed to do something extra to make up for not cooking for him. With some of the ideas they came up with though, Judai was one-hundred percent sure that part of the reason they went the extra mile with decorating was because they were bored and wanted to make the time pass faster.

Sure enough, when they carried their trays of goodies out with them to the garden and followed the little pathways in the right direction, the circular table was adorned with an expensive-looking table-cloth lined with a pretty gold pattern, a very well-made, large bouquet of flowers as the centerpiece, and with added seat cushions to the chairs for comfort. Plus, Judai was _very_ sure that the last time he'd been here, the table _hadn't_ been surrounded by bushes full of different-colored flowers, and that was only a couple weeks ago; that meant one of the workers had the ability to grow plants, or at least speed up growth, because that many full, blooming bushes did not grow from nothing in the span of roughly two weeks.

"It's beautiful," Yusei smiled, walking to the table with him and gently placing their trays down, "I see why you wanted to have a tea party now."

Judai hummed, glancing around at the scene again before turning back to him, "Admittedly, when I last saw it this place was kinda dusty, but clearly that's been taken care of. I'll have to thank those guys later... for now though, tea?" He quickly made his way over to where Yusei was on the other side of the table before the other could move, pulling back his chair for him with a cheeky smile and gesturing at him to sit.

It earned him the laugh he'd been looking for, and though Yusei raised an eyebrow in amusement, he obliged him anyway, "Why thank you, you're _such_ a gentleman."

"Nah, it's my pleasure," Judai replied, making his way to chair and plopping down in it before starting to unload the trays.

"I don't think a gentleman would say 'nah', to be honest."

"This gentleman does, he's a _casual_ gentleman."

Yusei snorted quietly, accepting the tea filter Judai passed to him now that they were all ready to start and putting it on his teacup, "What else does a casual gentleman do?"

"Find all the best ways to embarrass his queen, clearly," Judai teased, pushing one of the teapots closer to the other, "Here, try this one first. It's apparently the sweeter one of the bunch and more fruity."

"It'd be a lot easier if there was a name for it... or at least, one that's a little recognizable," Yusei mused, pouring a cup while Judai opted for the lighter one, which had a stronger bitterness to it but was rather thin and easily evened out with some honey - at least, that's how it'd been explained to him when he asked some of the duel monsters that passed by in the halls about it.

"I recognized a few of the ones that were stored on the shelf, I'm pretty sure if we learn all the fruit names in this place and try them we'll be good since that's how some of the tea leaves were labeled," Judai stated, taking a sip after mixing the honey in. It was just like they'd described it would be, and it tasted delicious.

 _Note to self: Bring some tea leaves back home with us_ , he thought, glancing back up at Yusei as he took another sip.

"Ah... I like this one, you were right - it's got a fruity sweetness to it, but I can't pinpoint exactly what kind of flavor it is," Yusei said, a soft smile on his face as took another few sips. He was a stunning sight to see, as usual, but something caught Judai's eye to the side and he knew he wouldn't be able to resist.

He got up and walked over to one of the bushes, having spotted a blue flower that had petals that faded into indigo the closer they got to the center - the part that'd really caught his attention, though, was the way it looked like it had a galaxy of tiny, white stars glittering across it. He picked it with just the right amount of stem left and quickly made his way over to Yusei, gently brushing some of his hair into place after making sure he'd put his cup down.

"There we go," Judai breathed, smiling softly at him as he leaned down a little, loving the way the color of the flower fit with all of Yusei's colors and letting his hand trail down to gently cup his face, "You're beautiful."

"Ah..." Yusei blinked, looking a little shyly up at him with pink cheeks and slightly parted lips.

He leaned down the rest of the way, sharing a short and sweet kiss with him before pulling back and brushing his hair out of his face again as carefully as he could, murmuring, "I love you."

"And I love you," Yusei murmured back, bringing a hand up to rest on top of his before he did a little grin that still made Judai's heart ache with fondness, "Let's eat, okay? I'll find a flower for you too afterwards."

He ended up finding a vibrant flower with orange-gold petals and bright green leaves, and this time Judai got to feel that nice feeling of shyness when Yusei gently put it in his hair, stating that he liked it because it reminded him of his eyes.


	236. King's Room

**_8/24/19_**

Since there was time to kill after lunch, Judai brought Yusei on a little tour of the rest of the castle, pointing out various rooms that 'd be important to remember. For example, he made sure Yusei knew where _their_ room in the castle was for future reference, especially if they ever needed to stay there for some reason.

"It's not the original 'King Room' - that's Haou's room, and no one was willing to touch that or use it in case of his wrath - but it's still a really nice bedroom," Judai stated, backing up a little before getting a running start onto the king-sized bed, "I mean, just look at this thing! This bed is huge and the room still has lots of leg-room despite that."

Yusei laughed as he walked up to the bed, sitting down and smiling at him as he brought his head into his lap, "It is very spacious... I like that it has a lot of light thanks to the windows, though."

Judai hummed, letting his eyes close and enjoying the feeling of Yusei's fingers lightly threading through his hair, "Careful, I might fall asleep if you keep doing that. This is really comfy."

"A nap wouldn't hurt, would it? We don't need to leave for another couple hours or so," Yusei asked quietly, making him open his eyes again as he sat up from his lap.

"Sounds like a plan to me - now scooch over, let's actually lie down the right way," Judai replied, waving him backwards towards the center of the bed. It took a minute or two to get comfortable, but once they did so they were able to share a few lazy kisses and cuddle with happy sighs.

"What other rooms were you going to show me?" Yusei wondered, currently occupied with doing his best to make sure Judai was stuck as half-asleep as possible - at least, that's what it felt like with how warm the hugs were and the way his fingers relentlessly scratched through his hair in just the right way.

"We only got about-" Judai yawned, tightening his grip on Yusei's jacket as he slowly blinked up at him with a smile, "-about a quarter of the castle left. The main last place I wanted to show you was the training room and the equipment room, since those two are pretty damn cool."

"How so?"

"There's _swords_. Real, sharp, pointy _swords_ that look like something right out of a fairy-tale, and there's a lot of them in the equipment room to pick and choose from for the training room."

"I'm guessing you've learned how to use swords then? That's... a little odd to think about," Yusei frowned, though it was with a smile, "Maybe I just need to try it myself."

"Swords are dangerous as all hell, but they're definitely a lot of fun to use on dummies, which is what I want you to try," Judai agreed, picturing it in his head and remembering the first time he tried using a sword. It got stuck in the dummy on the fourth swing, but until then the feel of slashing at it with a huge blade was incredibly satisfying; it turned into one of those memories he'd think about whenever he needed a quick lift to his mood since it always put a smile on his face.

He knew how to wield a sword thanks to Haou's memories, but the muscle memory wasn't there, which made for some interesting screw-ups as his mind said to do one thing while his body did another. He'd regained enough to show-off some swordplay, though, and he was tempted to do that for Yusei, but that would probably have to wait for another day where they hadn't made a huge loop of the towns and just eaten a late lunch.

For now though, they both let a light, peaceful atmosphere fill the air, stealing a few sweet kisses from each other as they continued to laugh quietly and chat about random things before eventually they fell asleep, cuddled together in the middle of a bunch of fluffy sheets and pillows with their hands held together.


	237. Revelation

_**8/25/19**_

A few days later, as it ended up happening, both the twins and Aki announced that they'd be leaving soon - the twins to go live with their parents, and Aki to go to college. She'd ended up making it into the medical school she'd been hoping for, in the special program she'd wanted to get into as well, and classes would be starting in a week or so; the school wanted everyone who'd be living in the dorms to move in early, especially if they were first years so they could go through orientation and get used to campus.

Aki would be leaving first, a day before the twins would, so after a bit of debating they figured they should tell her about the field spell portals earlier rather than later so she could practice with it before she left. Of course, they didn't tell her this when they asked her to come over and hang out - they wanted it to be a surprise, plus it was a chance for everyone to hang out together one more time. Crow and Jack took the day off from work and picked up the twins while Judai dragged Yusei out shopping for food so he could make a huge dinner.

She arrived in the early afternoon with a knock at the door - Yusei was in the middle of helping Judai sort out everything they'd bought in the kitchen and Jack was dealing with an enthusiastic Lua, so Crow was the one to open it.

"Well, if it isn't the brand-new college student!" Crow greeted, getting a laugh from everyone before letting her in, "Come on in, how're you doin'?"

"Pretty good, it's nice to be able to come here for once without a bag of schoolwork..." Aki replied. Yusei could hear the smile in her voice, which put a smile on his own face - it was nice to know that she was finally getting to be happy with how her life was going.

Yusei knew far too well about that, having thought hard about whether he himself was happy months ago. If he were to be truly honest with himself... it wasn't until Judai came crashing in and made him get out of the monotonous routine he'd started to fall into that he realized he'd been content, but not actually _happy_. He needed the occasional outings every week where they goofed off and did whatever they happened to want to do at the time, which Judai made sure to drag him out for, even when he said he didn't want to; he was good at being able to tell between the times where Yusei actually didn't want to go out and where he was just stressed and _thought_ he didn't want to go out, which was amazing to him because Yusei usually couldn't tell the difference.

Judai stopped to poke his head out of the kitchen doorway, giving a wave at the newcomer with a grin, "Hey! We'll be out in a bit, but you want anything to drink?"

"Hello Judai - and some water would be nice, thank you," Aki said, coming over and peeking around the doorway herself to greet him, "Hello Yusei."

"Hey, long time no see," he replied, waving the bag of noodles he was holding at her before putting them on the right shelf, "Sorry, we just got back from shopping and need to put everything away first."

"No worries, don't want the food going bad after all," she laughed, leaving the doorway to greet the twins, who from the sound of it tackled her into a hug.

Judai returned to go back to helping him, though Yusei noticed that he had a little frown on his face, which usually happened when he was trying to figure something out. He was very familiar with it after enough times looking over from his work and seeing him frown down at his notebook, though half the time that was usually paired with either slightly-pursed lips or puffed cheeks and squinted eyes as he glared at it.

It was really cute when he did that last one, to say the least.

"What's up?" Yusei asked quietly, nudging the other with a small, questioning smile, "You've got that look on your face that tells me you're thinking about something."

"Ah... do I?" Judai blinked, chuckling a little bit, "You're right though. I'm just... trying to figure out if I'm seeing things or not?" He frowned again as he thought about it for another few seconds before continuing in a much lower voice, "I could've sworn I saw Crow looking at Aki with this... glint in his eye? It was the same kind of look I caught Jack looking at Carly with when I first met her but a little more hidden, and he didn't do that before so I don't know if I'm imagining it."

Yusei stared at him in surprise, not having expected him to notice but glad that he had because now he wouldn't feel bad about sharing this secret with him.

"You weren't imagining it," he answered, a wide smirk forming on his face as he leaned in and whispered, "It's the best blackmail I've ever gotten on him, so don't do anything about it. It's my _failsafe_ , he doesn't want _anyone_ to know and will do literally anything to make sure of it."

Judai gaped slightly before chuckling with a smirk of his own, pecking him on the cheek and saying, "Alright, but you _have_ to tell me everything later, got it? If anything, this is perfect for some long-term planning."

Yusei hummed in agreement, and they shared another mischievous look and laughed before getting back to work - they had friends to hang out with, after all, and it was time for a rematch of the board game they'd played before. There was no way he was going to lose his 'Winner' title to Judai... not without a fight, at least.


	238. Keeping the Title

_**8/26/19**_

"Damn it," Judai muttered, giving Yusei a lighthearted glare as he let his cards fall to the table in defeat, "How do you keep doing that?"

"Like I said before, I make very educated guesses," Yusei grinned, triumphant in winning at the board game once again. Everyone else managed to last longer once again, and it ended up being a fight between him, Luka, and Judai towards the end, but before the other two could do anything he'd found the solution.

"You two put up a great fight though!" Lua cheered, taking advantage of the fact that Judai was sitting down to wrap his arms around both him and his sister, "I thought for sure one of you were gonna beat him!"

"Why was I the first one out again?" Jack huffed, his arms crossed as he sipped at a cup of coffee - he'd lost pretty early in the game like last time, but this time he didn't bother to stick around and went to brew himself something while he waited. At least he refilled everyone else's drinks while he did so, too.

"At least you died of your own mistakes, _someone_ here targeted me," Aki stated, raising an eyebrow at Crow.

Yusei had shared a look with Judai when they initially all sat down around the table, grinning internally at the fact that Crow had immediately sat himself down right next to Aki. He then proceeded to target her with event cards throughout the game, which ended up being almost impossible _not_ to lose to, and from the look on Judai's face Yusei could tell that he was wondering how he _hadn't_ noticed it before.

It was just one of those things that when you knew about it, it became painfully obvious but when you didn't, it basically didn't exist.

Crow laughed unashamedly, sending her a toothy grin, "Hey, I'll have you know I chose a random number before we started and it just happened to be yours. I can't control what the world decided to give me."

"You could've, y'know, _ignored it_."

"Where's the fun in that?"

Aki sighed but smiled in defeat, laughing a bit when Luka flopped onto the couch next to her and sighed in understanding as well, which in turn led to both the twins crawling on the couch to maker her laugh more.

"Well, I don't know about you guys but I'm hungry - that game took way longer than last time," Judai said, stretching his arms up and following Luka's example by flopping over onto Yusei in the chair next to him, "Winner cleans up?"

"We made him clean it up last time, though..." Luka frowned, sitting up before smiling at Yusei, "We'll do it this time, you go help Judai with dinner, okay?"

"Thanks," Yusei replied, leaning back a little so he could press a kiss to Judai's chin, "Now, you need to get up and off of me so that _I_ can get up, mister."

"But you're so comfy," Judai teased, letting his weight fall even more on him to the point that Yusei started to fall forward and almost lost his balance. Before he could fall off from that, though, he found himself suddenly with nothing underneath him; he yelped slightly as he fell backwards and was quickly caught and dragged up by the armpits.

"Judai-!"

"Aw, don't worry, I'll always catch you if you fall!~"

Yusei gave him an embarrassed glare as everyone else started laughing, though he couldn't keep it for long when Judai dragged him around the corner of the kitchen out of sight and gave him a nice, long apology kiss.


	239. College Present

_**8/27/19**_

After dinner, the twins needed to go back to the apartment early to finish up a homework project and pack some more, so both Jack and Crow went with them, deciding to hang out for a bit and check to make sure everything was coming along well with that. In the meantime, Yusei and Judai finally told Aki about the field spell portal.

"We've got a bit of a 'Good Luck' present for you, Aki," Yusei started after the four had left, pulling open the desk drawer and gently grabbing out a duel disk for her to use.

"Oh? You guys didn't need to... thank you, though," Aki smiled, giving the two of them a curious look, "What'd you get?"

"It's less of 'what did we get' and more-so 'what did we figure out' in this case," Judai answered, gesturing for her to come and take the duel disk from him after he'd turned it on into stand-by mode, "Put this on and get out your deck."

It took a minute of shuffling around, but soon enough Aki was ready, her deck kept out in one hand so she could go through it easily, and she chuckled, "Okay, so... what'd you guys figure out? The suspense is killing me here."

Judai made a little bit of a flourish with his hands for dramatic effect, much to Yusei's amusement, before explaining, "Alright, so here it is. You know how all three of us can materialize monsters and use spells and stuff? Well, apparently you can do the same thing to field spells, except it doesn't do what you'd initially think it'd do - it opens a freakin' _portal_ to whatever place it is."

Aki gaped at them slightly with wide eyes, looking between him and Judai for confirmation before stating, "That's so... how did no one think of doing that before? That's amazing!"

"I told him that you had a field spell in your deck that was most likely your signer dragon's domain, so we figured you'd get good use out of knowing," Yusei stated, smiling at the thought of his spirits and Starlight Junktion, "It's nice to hang out with your duel spirits in their territory. Since they're so connected to you, you shouldn't have much trouble at all opening the portal."

"To get back, all you have to do is activate it again and it'll drop you right back where you initially opened it," Judai continued, waving at her deck, "Try it once, just to see that you can. I wouldn't actually go until you have a solid chuck of time to spend there, though."

"If they're anything like mine, they'll keep you occupied for _hours_ with just showing you around the first few times," Yusei said, which to his confusion made Aki pause and look up at him as she looked through her deck.

"Wait... since when did you have a field spell?" she blinked, raising an eyebrow at him, "Did you forget to tell at least one of us about stuff that happened again? And- before you say anything, _no_ , Judai doesn't count because he was obviously involved with it."

Yusei gave her a sheepish look, glancing off to the side and internally cursing at Judai for starting to crack up at the situation, "Ah... maybe?" He gave Judai a look when he finally made eye contact with him, which got him to calm down a little before bursting out into laughter again at the sound of Aki's exasperated sigh.

"Seriously, you guys... well, congratulations, at least. Which archetype is it for? You kind-of use a mix of them, after all."

"The Junk archetype - the place is called Starlight Junktion, with 'Junktion' being spelled with a 'k' instead of a 'c'."

Aki snorted at that, laughing as she finally looked back down at her deck and found her field spell card, "Of course it would be a pun, why wouldn't it be a pun? Well, anyway, I guess it's time to finally try this out for myself."

To both his and Judai's delight, she was able to open the portal to Black Garden without a hitch, and they later shared victorious and proud grins when she called them the next day in the afternoon and thanked them profusely for telling her about it after spending the day with her duel spirits.


	240. Brainstorming

_**8/28/19**_

Yusei sighed, slumping down in his chair and letting his head rest on the desk into front of him after carefully cleaning off a space on it. He'd taken another break, paying a visit to his duel monsters again and busying himself in the hopes that he'd finally be able to figure out what he wanted to do, but it was several hours later already and he'd come up with nothing new.

That something, of course, was trying to answer what in the world he'd be getting Judai for his birthday. He'd already come up with something to do on the day - that had been the easy part, emailing the right people and getting everything organized like it was a part of his standard work process - but he hadn't come up with the present part. He knew he wanted it to be a bit... special, but he was having issues coming up with something that would be.

A nudge both on his feet and on his shoulders brought him out of his thoughts, and he chuckled a little at the sight of both Junk Synchron and Sonic Chick looking at him curiously, "Hey guys."

"Hey, you doin' okay?" Synchron retorted, floating in front of him just above the desk while Sonic Chick took the time to hop up on the chair next to him, "You've been sighing all day, we're getting a little worried. Do I need to go get Quillbolt and make him hug you? He's fluffy, his hugs are great."

"I know they are," Yusei replied softly, cheering up easily and laughing a little at the reminder - Quillbolt was fluffy, yes, and could get very enthusiastic about hugs, but one always had to be careful not to stab themselves or hurt their arms on his back of nails. He paused for a moment in thought before shaking his head lightly, continuing, "I'm fine, don't worry. In fact... maybe you guys can help me fix my problem?"

"C-can we? Should we call over the others for a group meeting?" Sonic Chick asked, looking excited at the idea of being able to help. Synchron was as well, and before Yusei could say anything else, had already started calling everyone else in the vicinity over to listen.

"I... I guess this works," Yusei shrugged, looking at the little group that'd formed around his current work-space, "Okay, so... It's Judai's birthday in a few days, and I can't think of something to get him. I've already got the day planned, but nothing for the present - anything I think of just doesn't feel... special enough, I suppose."

"That _is_ a bit of a conundrum," Junk Warrior hummed, Junk Anchor and Speed Warrior flitting around them a bit as everyone put their heads together to try and think of something. If there was one thing Yusei had learned about his duel monsters, though, it was that they all worked best when they worked together, which included him as well when he was added into the mix; he knew he could count on them to help him come up with something satisfactory.

"I know he'd probably appreciate something simple, if that helps at all."

"I'd imagine a man like that _would_ appreciate something simple, hm? Traveling all over the different dimensions like that with such a duty as his would make it hard to want anything _but_ simplicity."

Yusei had thought about that, of course, considering how important Judai's role was in preserving the peace even now (something that made him secretly a little, tiny, itsy bit _glad_ that the stuff he'd had to deal with was gone, permanently, and made him appreciate every moment with Judai a little more whenever he thought of having to _still_ deal with it), but he hadn't thought of it in terms of getting Judai a present. He fiddled idly with a couple parts on the table as he mulled over the new point of view, before looking down and pausing at the sight of exactly _which_ parts he was holding.

Yusei narrowed his eyes down at them, licking his lips a little before smiling to himself at the sudden flash of inspiration he'd gotten, "Thanks, I think that's what I needed... I've got an idea, and I'm gonna need your guys' help."

He told them, the idea getting met with a unanimous chorus of approval from the group as they all started scurrying around, getting things in order so they could help him make it a reality. It was a little nerve-wracking of an idea, but... he knew from the second the idea came to mind that it was the most perfect thing he could possibly do.

With a happy smile and a light feeling in his chest, he joined the fray and got to work.


	241. Burn Damage

_**8/29/19**_

They'd been successful in making the present, but on the other hand...

Well, Yusei wasn't going to be able to _hide_ his hands, so he didn't even try when he came back. He'd been forced to take off his gloves due to the delicate nature of the work, but as a result he'd gotten a couple burns and bad scrapes from the tools he was working with - he hadn't used some of them before, so whenever he messed up (which, he was proud to admit, wasn't as often as he'd initially thought it would be) he got another injury to his hands to show for it.

It hurt in the moment of course, but they'd reduced to a dull ache after a few minutes that he barely noticed as he kept working, which is why he figured it wasn't too bad. Plus, he'd gotten worse injuries working on the runners over the years, so with that as a comparison it really was minor to him.

He knew Judai wouldn't think so, though, so he simply sighed to himself in acceptance of the inevitable as he stepped in the room and Judai's head popped up from his notebook to greet him with a smile.

"You're back! How'd it go? Do anything fun?" Judai asked, standing up and dragging him into a hug.

He was careful not to press too hard on his hands when he hugged him back, not wanting to make it worse before he could clean them up a bit and bandage them, and replied, "It was nice. We all got another project going, though it's something that only one or two of them are experts in, so it's been a learning experience to say the least. I promised to drop by again tomorrow for a couple hours so we could keep working on it."

Truthfully, the present was already done - Yusei just needed to get something nice to present it in, so his monsters had promised to keep it safe in the meantime. So, technically, it _was_ still an ongoing project, just... not really when one actually looked at it. He needed an excuse to go back and get it ready with the proper materials though, so he'd take what he could get.

Judai hummed, pulling back and giving him a bit of a softer smile that he couldn't help but make as well when he saw it, "I'm glad you're spending time with them, it's always a good thing to get closer with your duel spirits... they're basically family." He started trailing his hands down Yusei's arms, so Yusei prepared himself for the inevitable while Judai kept talking, "This works out well actually, Edo told me he had a last minute job open up tomorrow for a lunch-time brunch so while I-"

Judai cut himself off with a frown, feeling the uneven, rough skin under his fingers before pulling on Yusei's wrists to bring his hands in front of him; judging from the glint the other got in his eyes, Yusei knew a lecture (or at least a very expressive expression of worry) was incoming.

" _Yusei!_ What happened to your hands?!" Judai exclaimed, looking over his hands with careful fingers and critical eyes before dragging him and forcing him to sit on the bed with an admonishing glare, "You stay right there and hold up your arms. I _don't_ want to see anything touching them while I go get the first aid kit, got it? And while I do that, _explain_ , damn it."

"Just my first time using a couple of specialized tools, that's all. These are all from the first couple tries with any of the new machines, but I'm good now and can handle them just fine," Yusei assured him, glad to see that the explanation managed to mollify the other's upset attitude a bit. He still winced though when Judai came back and pressed a clean washcloth to his hands to clean them, which hurt like hell because Judai had to rub the cloth on the skin and couldn't do much about it otherwise.

Still, with the way Judai hit a few spots a couple times (all in places where it wouldn't make it worse), Yusei knew he was going to be watched like a hawk to make sure he didn't do anything too stressful on his hands. Thank the stars that they had accelerated healing cream and soaps from the Aromages - he would need to tag along with Judai soon so he could thank them personally for making what they did, because by the time he planned to go back to Starlight Junktion tomorrow his hands would be mostly healed.

Judai grumbled a bit as he swiftly and expertly applied different medicines to his hands before bandaging them and tying them off, gently holding both of his hands up once he was finished and kissing them lightly.

"Try to be a little more careful, please?" Judai asked quietly, sitting next to him on the bed after cleaning up and putting away the first aid kit, "Hand injuries suck, the last thing you want is to not be able to use your hands - I once had mine cut up in a fight so bad I couldn't use them for two weeks because it hurt too much to pick up things, and let me tell you right now, it was _fucking hell_. Don't copy me, dear."

"It wasn't _that_ bad," Yusei sighed, noting that Judai hadn't let go of his hands and shifting himself accordingly. With a scoot backwards and a bit of nudging, he let his chin rest on Judai's head with his arms draped over the other in his lap so Judai could hold and fiddle with them all he wanted, "I've gotten worse burns working on my runner. That, and electrical burns suck a lot, especially when they sometimes feel cold."

"Okay, how about a compromise then - we _both_ make sure to be more careful not to injure our hands."

"That's a deal I can do."

"So... now that that's cleared up, what's the project you guys're working on? I'm curious about what you were making to get these injuries in the first place."

Yusei merely hummed, letting his head fall down next to his face so he could press a soft kiss to his cheek and the side of his nose, smiling in victory when he got a laugh out of him, "That's a secret. You'll find out soon, though."


	242. Forgetfulness

_**8/30/19**_

Yusei leaned back in his chair, watching Judai doodle away in one of his sketchbooks without a care in the world with a curious look. He'd expected him to ask... _something_ about his birthday, since it was definitely something he could see him doing, but Judai hadn't said a single word about it yet.

 _Did he... forget?_ He thought to himself, a tiny, amused smile forming at the idea, _He totally forgot, didn't he?_

Well, Yusei couldn't judge - he'd forgotten his birthday multiple times over the years (though sometimes it was because he had no access to a calendar and lost track of the days) and Judai seemed like the type to forget, especially with all the travelling he'd done. He knew just what living day-to-day did to one's sense of time and it was easy to forget thanks to it.

Still, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to tease him about it. Plus, then he could get Judai thinking about it and have the satisfaction of watching him pout cutely about it the rest of the day when he wouldn't tell him his plans.

"Judai," he called, getting the other's attention after a few more pencil strokes on the paper were made. He rested his head on one hand on the chair arm and couldn't help but grin already.

"That's me," Judai grinned back, setting his stuff down carefully before patting the couch next to him, "You done? 'Cause if you are, then get over here so I can hug you."

Yusei laughed but obliged, getting up and letting Judai pull him down when he got close enough, "Yeah I'm done, I just needed to send out a bunch of emails. It's ridiculous how many people I have to go through to get the removal approved, and I wanted to make sure I didn't need to deal with any of it tomorrow."

"Oh? You takin' another off day tomorrow?" Judai asked curiously, pulling him backwards so they were half-laying down, but comfortably on the cushions.

Yup, Judai'd definitely forgotten about his birthday.

"Of course I'm taking the day off tomorrow," Yusei chuckled, burying his head into his neck with an exasperated sigh and teasing, "Looks like my cute Kuriboh can't remember when his birthday is."

Judai froze, letting out a loud bark of laughter after a few moments and hugging him tighter, "Oh shit, you're right! Jeez, what would I do without you?"

"Be as forgetful as I am sometimes."

"We're both forgetful, we just always seem to remember what the other person forgot."

They shared an amused glance before chuckling again, hands un-snaking from around each other so they could thread them together instead.

"So... what'cha planning?" Judai asked, giving him a foxy grin.

Too bad that wouldn't work on him - Yusei wouldn't be swayed by _any_ look or plead to tell, not with this, and he replied, "Nope."

"Aw, come on Yus, just a little hint?"

"You'll like it - there's your hint, happy?"

Judai pouted at him, which was a very clear 'no', while Yusei smirked back and fully enjoyed witnessing the other's burning curiosity eat away at him. He tried a few more times, calling him nearly every endearing nickname he'd managed to come up with thus far, but nothing was going to get him to budge.

"Just wait until tomorrow, okay? It's already getting to be late afternoon, it'll be time before you know it," Yusei stated, covering his mouth with a kiss before Judai could protest at all. He kept it up until he felt Judai finally give up and relax into him, then pulled back and brushed a few bits of hair out of his face; he rest a hand on his face, pressing another short kiss to his lips before smiling and saying, "Come on, you wanna go for a ride? The sun'll be setting soon, we can go to our usual spot and maybe it'll take your mind off it for a bit."

"...Mm'kay," Judai conceded, giving him a soft smile before it grew wide and foxy once again, "Also, wording dear."

Yusei fully believed that Judai deserved the light flick to his forehead that he got, giving him a very exasperated stare and huffing a little as Judai laughed at his small bit of embarrassment.


	243. Judai's Birthday

_**8/31/19**_

To Yusei's luck, he managed to wake up before Judai, which meant he was able to sneak out of bed after a few careful movements as to not wake Judai up to make breakfast. It'd been a while since he'd last done it, and he figured a good way to start off the other's birthday would be to cook something for him - he'd been practicing his pancakes in the morning recently, so he was pretty confident in them. Plus, he'd been playing around with some of the weird fruits they'd brought back from the spirit world and discovered that a couple of them actually tasted good with chocolate chips and other sweets like that, and went surprisingly well on a pancake, so he could give him something new to try.

He got a couple messages from Johan and Manjoume while he cooked, double-checking about what they were supposed to do, and he idly replied in confirmation as he waited for the current side of the pancake to cook through. The e-mail he'd sent them was pretty detailed despite being for something relatively simple, which was to pretty much gather up as many presents from the rest of Judai's friends as they could and bring it over alongside as much freshly-made ebi fry as possible, so he hadn't been worried about whether they'd understood or not.

He'd ended up with just the two of them, mainly because everyone was busy with previous arrangements or work, so he figured they could just pick up everyone's presents and bring them to the apartment alongside lunch. That way it wasn't too big of an affair while also making sure that Judai got as many presents for his birthday as he possibly could from his friends, including those that Yusei hadn't met yet since they either weren't in the country or had very demanding jobs and simply hadn't found the time.

A couple minutes later, the pancakes were all plated and put on a tray alongside a mug of Judai's favorite coffee and a small bowl of homemade whipped cream (Judai had tried making it a single time and it was so much better that they just kept a stock of it in the fridge now); he made his way back up and put it safely to the side, sitting on the side of the bed and softly brushing the messy bed-head out of Judai's face.

"Time to wake up," Yusei stated, shaking him a little and smiling when Judai cracked his eyes open with a little, unintelligible mumble, "Happy Birthday."

That got him awake - Judai's eyes lost most of their tiredness as they snapped open the rest of the way, a happy grin appearing quickly, "Thanks love - and are those pancakes I see? Best birthday morning ever so far."

"Chocolate chip with fruit on top, I still haven't memorized the names yet of all those things," Yusei said, pausing when Judai opened his arms up for a hug that he was quick to give, "I promise it's good, though. I tried it out the other day."

Judai hummed, burying his head into his shoulder for a couple seconds before popping back up, blinking his eyes in a way that told Yusei he was still waking up fully, "Well, I'm never scared to try new food - plus you're vouching for it and it's being paired with chocolate, so it's gotta be good."

After the first bite a very content smile fell over Judai's face as he went straight for a second, and Yusei chuckled as he got a little bit of whipped cream on his nose in the process. He couldn't resist gently kissing it off once Judai was in-between bites again, getting a cute little sheepish look from Judai who clearly tried to be a bit slower in eating so he didn't accidentally make a mess. Judai did get him back though by pulling the 'birthday' card and making him let him feed him his own portion of the food, which ended up with a bit of whipped cream on his own cheek instead. Of course, Judai capitalized on that and got payback for the nose kiss before finally letting Yusei finish his food on his own.

"So, my cute Kuriboh," Yusei started once they both had finished eating, putting the tray of dirty dishes back off to the side and out of the way as he turned to face him, "You have a choice - you can get my present now, or you can get it last. I don't mind either way, but I want to give it to you when it's just us, so..."

"You've been teasing me about it since yesterday, of course I want it now," Judai replied, pouting at first before an little excited grin took over instead.

"Now then," Yusei agreed, leaning back to open his bedside table's drawer and pull out a tiny red box wrapped with a ribbon. He could feel himself getting excited as well, giddy as he finally passed it over to Judai but kept his hands close enough that he could hold the other's hands again after he'd undone the ribbon.

Judai looked at him questioningly, looking up from the box when he took his hands in his and gently slid the box out as he spoke, "First of all, this is the project I've been working on the last two days, in case you're wondering. Second of all..."

He popped the lid of the box off with his thumb, letting it fall forgotten onto the bed as he focused on the way Judai's eyes widened, face flushing after a moment when what he was seeing really sunk in.

"Y-Yusei-"

"It's not an actual one - I think we both can agree that it's too early for that," Yusei explained softly, gently pulling one of Judai's hands forward before taking one ring out of the box and sliding it onto his ring finger, "But I thought it'd be nice to have something... physical for us, especially when I thought about how there's most likely going to be times in the future where we're apart for a bit of time. So, promise rings." When he saw that Judai was starting to tear up a little, a silly little smile on his face that was very similar to the one he'd worn when they'd first confessed to each other, Yusei grinned, pulling out the other ring and holding it out to him, "Here, want to put mine on for me?"

Judai nodded, taking the ring from him and grabbing his hand this time instead, breathing out quietly, "Of course I do, you lovely man. You made these?"

"It took a few tries and a couple lectures from the one monster there that knew how to make jewelry, but yes, I did," Yusei replied, chuckling along with Judai before asking, "You like them? I kept them simple, but they've got a couple engravings on them... on the inside, too."

"I love them," Judai laughed, rubbing one of his eyes with the back of his hand and giving him that signature bright-eyed smile that Yusei loved, "I love you even more, though."

"I love you too," he smiled, pulling him forward and onto his lap so he could wrap him into a bear hug and kiss him. Judai's heart was beating just as fast as his was, and he grinned at the feeling of the rings on their hands when they let their fingers intertwine; the next few minutes were filled with little whispered 'I love you's and sweet kisses and soft laughter, everything else in the world fading away to just them.

They sighed happily in sync after with their foreheads pressed together, which eventually broke them out of the soft moment as they broke out into much louder laughter, pulling apart and grinning at each other.

"I don't think any other birthday present I get is going to hold a candle to this, Yusei."

"Trust me, I know. I'm just wondering what the hell I'm going to do next year because I don't think I can top this... speaking of which, we need to get ready for the day."

"Ah that's right, you said you'd planned something!" Judai remembered - Yusei noted that he'd started to absentmindedly rub the ring on his finger as he talked, trying to figure out what he'd done for the day. It made him happy and a little relieved to know that he liked it so much and had responded so positively, even if he'd already known on the inside that that was exactly how he'd react.

Still, Yusei needed to distract him from the long list of guesses he was spouting out, so he idly nudged Judai up and out of the bed towards the bathroom while he brought up a different topic, "The metal the rings are made out of is incredibly durable, by the way. If you ever need to punch something while you're wearing it, it'll hurt them way more than it'll hurt you."

Judai snorted, easily taking the bait and switching the conversation, "Aw, you made it with self defense in mind! You're so cute, you gearhead."

"I figured if anyone was going to get into a fight, it would probably be you, what with the spirit world protection and all that... it might as well be useful for something other than being a very meaningful keepsake if it can be, y'know?"

He grumbled as Judai reached up and rubbed his cheeks around while teasing him, but Yusei would happily grin and bear it - all he needed was the feeling of the ring on his hand and the continued amazed and slightly-flustered looks Judai kept giving his own ring throughout the rest of the day.


	244. Full Ensemble

_**9/1/19**_

Judai got a _lot_ of presents, to say the least. He'd laughed at the disgruntled look on Jun's face under a veritable mass of colorfully wrapped boxes the previous day, and although most of them were superfluous (which he still greatly appreciated, because he finally had a place to keep them in the first place - travelling meant that almost no one was able to buy him physical presents and were forced to call him to say happy birthday, after all) a couple of them stood out. Jun and Asuka had combined theirs into a kind of 'notebook' care package, with three brand-new dot page notebooks with thick pages and new pencils and pens, and Daichi sent him a 3d-printed figure of Flame Wingman, which was apparently painted by Rei, _who was his wife_?

He _really_ wanted to know the story behind that one, even _more_ than the one behind Jun and Asuka. Before he'd left, he was pretty sure they were barely friends, not interacting much at all, which made it even weirder to think about.

The impact twenty years could have was still baffling to him sometimes.

Either way, one particular present took the prize for being the most interesting and hilarious, and it was from one Jim Crocodile Cook. Apparently, Johan and him talked a lot and had grown pretty close over the years, and he was Johan's go-to whenever he had a story to tell or was bored - this meant that when Judai had told Johan about Yusei's poncho and gun duel disk to gush about how cool they were, Johan had told Jim, and then Jim, being the intelligent man he is, came up with the brilliant idea to give him an authentic cowboy hat to match with the outfit.

 _Maybe I can convert you to the wonders of wearing a cowboy hat like this all the time_ , the card had read, which made it all the more hilarious to him. It included a picture of him, older now and still rocking the classic cowboy get-up, though this time with an actual, solid eye-patch instead of bandages, alongside a picture of him giving Johan a noogie.

Needless to say, Johan had been a bit embarrassed when he saw that, and immediately pulled out his phone to text Jim while everyone else chuckled at his misfortune.

Now that he'd gotten a nice night of sleep though, he desperately needed to see Yusei wearing the entire ensemble; when they went to finally pull themselves out of bed in the morning, he pulled the outfit together and shoved it wordlessly in a bundle in front of Yusei when he came out of the bathroom, giving him puppy eyes that he knew he wouldn't resist, even if he could in the first place.

"Alright," Yusei sighed with an exasperated smile, taking the bundle from him and grabbing his day clothes from the clothes drawer along with his jacket on the chair, "You don't have to give me that face, y'know. I fully expected this the second you got that hat yesterday."

"Doesn't hurt to add it on, though," Judai replied cheekily, flopping backwards onto the bed with a small cheer, "Go, quick!~ I need to see this so bad."

"'Need' he says," Yusei teased, complying as he shut the door to the bathroom for surprise's sake. It only took a minute or so for him to finish, and he did a little knock on the door that got Judai's attention and told him to sit up to look.

The sight he was met with was _amazing_ , in his opinion. He thought Yusei looked pretty damn cool before, but the hat added an extra little something to the look that really solidified it - Yusei's hair spikes were flattened a little but still prominently stuck out from underneath it, streaks of yellow contrasting well with the black and browns, and his eyes were shadowed in just the right way by the lip of the hat to make his look just ever-so-slightly more intense.

The other tipped his hat a little, giving him an amused little grin at his reaction, "I'm guessing it fits well?"

"It should be illegal to look that good," Judai stated, feeling his face warm a little when Yusei let out a chuckle in response and pulled out the duel disk so he could spin it in his hand, "I still wanna learn how to do that, you make it look so _easy_."

Yusei hummed, not saying anything for a few seconds before pinning him with a wink and another of those evil grins that did things to his chest and said, "I'll give you... let's go with three pictures. Tell me how you want me, Judai."

 _He had to have worded it like that on purpose, damn it_ , he thought to himself, noting the way Yusei's eyes glinted when the words registered and he pulled out his phone after a pause to stumble over his mind deciding to go straight to the gutter.

It was so worth any embarrassment though, because he ended up very satisfied with the set of pictures he took, even if they'd never truly compare to the actual sight in front of him.


	245. Energy Disposal

_**9/2/19**_

Yusei finally got the approval he needed to take care of the reactor by himself. He'd relayed the good news to Judai that night, and after a bit of planning and double-checking things again they found themselves at the site and ready to finally get rid of the old duel energy.

"I can't imagine how it'll feel to stand here and _not_ be insanely put on-edge," Judai said, huddled on the ground next to him towards the end of the afflicted area.

They'd taken maps of all the floors of the facility and squared each one up into grid-ed sections so it was easy to keep track of where they'd already cleared out and where they hadn't gone yet. After they cleared the outside, they'd go through the floors one-by-one, marking off the map as they did so until they'd finally finished - by Yusei's estimations based on their test from before, it was going to be nearly an all-day process, and that wasn't taking into account any possible exhaustion Judai got from spamming open portals all day.

Granted, Judai was also the person who could hold multiple materialized monsters across the span of the city for literally an entire day with barely any strain on his powers, but it didn't hurt to be cautious - there were close to almost two-hundred sections and he'd never had to work with field-spell portals before, plus he'd be forced to use his own ability to make portals at some point because of a lack of their duel spirits at different locations to change the opening point. The plan was to spread out the duel energy across different places so that it didn't have too much of an effect on the surroundings just in case, and they could only find so many generic, mass-printed field spells that opened up to places suitable for their purposes; once they ran out they'd be relying on Judai's knowledge of war-torn areas across the spirit dimensions to open up to.

"It's something to look forward to, at least," Yusei replied, bringing a hand up to stroke soothingly through Judai's hair and getting a thankful smile in return, "Shall we then? The sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done."

Judai hummed in agreement, and the next few hours were filled with doing the same action over and over again - portals opened, duel energy lured in, portal closed, map marked, rinse and repeat. They got about half-way done when Yusei first noted that Judai was looking a little tired, though from the way the other smiled at him it wasn't anything to worry much about; it was only when they'd moved on to opening Judai's own portals instead of using field-spells that the tiredness became worrisome.

Judai wasn't physically exhausted or anything - he wasn't breathing hard nor having a hard time moving. No, it was the fact that his tone got a little more dull with every portal he opened and closed, and his eyes were starting to get a little bit of a faraway look in them like he was zoning out.

 _There's only ten squares left_ , Yusei thought to himself, looking over the last map and glancing back at Judai, whose smile looked calm in a dull way as he leaned on his shoulder, hugging his arm contentedly, _He... should be fine, hopefully. Still, it wouldn't hurt to make sure..._

"Judai?" Yusei asked, turning his head to let his face brush the other's head, giving a light kiss to his temple. When he got a questioning noise in answer, he sighed and continued, "How're you feeling?"

There was silence for a few moments, though Yusei realized after a bit when Judai suddenly tightened his grip on him that it was because he was mulling over the question like he didn't realize how much he'd slowed down. He got a startled glance then before Judai was biting his lip, which he was quick to bring his other hand up to stop by running his thumb over it.

"Everything feels kinda... muted," Judai mumbled lowly, releasing him with one of his hands to rub at his face a bit as if it'd make the feeling go away, "I think it's from using the Gentle Darkness like this so much. Portals take more effort to make than materializing spirits, and I've never done so many before... it's mentally exhausting."

"Do you think the nature of it has something to do with it as well?"

"I wouldn't be surprised - the Gentle Darkness is pretty calm in nature, and I guess having dulled senses would be something along those same lines."

"Well, we've got ten more and then you'll be able to check-out if you want. Think you can make it?"

"I've gotten this far, I can do ten more," Judai huffed, a little bit of his lost energy coming back to him. Yusei was glad for it, since it was exactly the kind of reassurance he was looking for and he felt better knowing that Judai would be okay.

Right after the last portal was closed, Judai slumped against him, grip a little more relaxed than usual as he rested his head on his shoulder with a sigh, "It's all gone, I can't sense anymore here. We did it, Yusei."

Yusei chuckled, scratching the top of the other's head for a moment before nudging him back up and guiding him by the hand out of the building - he'd already packed up his tools into the backpack he'd brought, so his entire focus was able to shift onto Judai.

He was stumbling a little over his feet with heavy blinks and slightly glazed eyes, and Judai's gaze was almost entirely fixed on their hands as they walked. Yusei could only guess that it was because of the physical touch being the most prominent thing in his senses right now, based on what he'd said before, which told him that in order to help him recover from the over-use he was going to have to do a lot of cuddling on top of giving him something he could work on with his hands, maybe a rubiks' cube or something like that. Lots of sleep too, of course, but he had a feeling that wouldn't be enough to fully reverse the effects.

Yusei waited until they were back at the runner to finally reply, giving him a proud smile and cupping his face with a hand, "You did a great job. Now, just relax, alright? I'll get us back safe and sound, leave the rest of it to me."

Judai gave him a grateful smile, pressing back when he leaned down to kiss him for a few seconds before flopping down into the seat and letting his eyes close, "Thanks, Yusei."

Yusei was still worried, yes, but at least a lot of it was abated by that reaction. Now his main worry was making sure Judai held onto him in some way on the way back and didn't fall out of the motorcycle by leaning too far.


	246. Sense Restoration

_**9/3/19**_

Yusei wasn't entirely sure what to do to help Judai when they got back. Sure, it was simple enough to determine that he should probably let the other go sit down and _sleep_ more than anything else, but Judai was also up and moving and latched onto him; he didn't really want to move him in that case, but he was a little worried about bringing him in the kitchen while he made them food.

"So you said before that it was like... all your senses were muted?" Yusei asked, getting a nod from the head buried in his shoulder and sighing, "Does that mean you need to sleep it off or does it mean you need to have your senses stimulated to get them back to normal?" He leaned on the wall instead of moving to sit on the couch, letting his arms wrap the other in a comfortable hug while the other took his time thinking.

"...Yubel says the second one," Judai replied eventually, voice still having that even, dull twinge to it, "Said sleeping wouldn't get rid of it fully, based off previous experience with Haou overusing it too."

"Well, then that's what we'll do," Yusei said, scratching the other's hair a little more roughly than usual while still being relatively gentle. He felt Judai un-tense just ever-so-slightly in response, so he made a mental note to himself to keep doing that whenever he could as he nudged Judai's weight up so he could prop himself off the wall and walk into the kitchen, asking another question, "Is it affecting them, too?"

"A little, not much though. Vision is the only thing not too impacted by it," Judai answered, face pinching a little into a frown when Yusei un-wrapped him from his waist and put him in a kitchen chair but ultimately complying so he could do everything faster.

The first thing Yusei decided to grab was a really strong peppermint tea that was saved for when someone was sick or had allergies that resulted in a stuffed-up nose; hopefully, the strong scent and taste would help a bit and Judai would be able to enjoy it. While that steeped, he stared at the contents of the fridge, trying to figure out something to make that'd help out as well.

They didn't have anything already made that would be considered 'strong' enough, so he fell back onto Plan B, which was to make a super spicy dish that'd probably kill their tongues but would definitely get Judai's attention. Obviously, it wouldn't be to the point of ruining his sense of taste since that would be counterproductive, but he wanted the heat to get to him more than anything else, and sharply, preferably in the first bite so that it was more of a shock to his senses.

He gave Judai his tea once it was done, smiling to himself in pride when Judai took it, smelled it and gave it another, slightly startled glance before smiling very small and starting to drink - clearly it'd been the right choice and helped him a little. With the other now a bit more happy and occupied, he went about and made a very quick, but very spicy fried rice that only took him around ten minutes to make.

"...That's a lot of that particular blend," Judai piped up when he was liberally adding in spices during the process, causing him to look back and hold the other's gaze with a raised eyebrow.

"That's the point, yes," Yusei replied simply, tilting his head a little as he watched Judai merely stare back for a bit before turning back to his drink.

 _Now that I think about it, the way he's acting right now reminds me a little of Haou_ , Yusei mused, stirring around the rice in the pan idly and making sure the spice was evenly distributed, _Maybe that's part of the reason his personality is like that... Judai did say that he was a king and used his powers a lot for both the position and in war. He could've overused it too much and never properly undid the results of doing so because there simply wasn't time, or he didn't want to._

It was probably the case, especially based off what Yubel had said - of course, this only made him want to pick apart the issue more, which he didn't exactly want to be doing at the moment, so he simply focused his thoughts onto thinking up different ways to help him.

...Ah, perfect. He could tickle him to death again, and this time he could say he had a legitimate, non-selfish reason to do it as a defense when Judai was feeling better, even if he really, really did and there were many. Sue him for wanting to hear his lover laugh brightly again without that horrible, dull twinge to it, but he was really starting to hate that bland calmness.

It just... wasn't Judai. It didn't fit him at all, he was his little ball of sunshine that had energy like a Kuriboh sometimes.

"Alright, here you go," Yusei stated, setting the plate in front of the other and putting down his own across from him with an anticipatory grin - he'd made sure to pour some glasses of milk from the fridge as well so he could just tell Judai to drink it sometimes. Then, he didn't have to worry about it starting to be too spicy on accident.

Judai took that first bite, eyes widening the second he close his mouth around the fork and muttering in slight shock, "Holy shit."

"Spicy?"

"Very... I could _feel_ that one in my chest, Yusei."

"Good, that was the goal," Yusei smirked toothily, happily noting that the dull twinge to the other's voice was gone for the moment from the shock of it and that Judai's eyes were a little more alert and bright, "Now, eat the whole thing, then we're going up and having some... _fun_."

Judai gave him a look, seeming rightfully on-edge from the way he was grinning darkly before asking slowly, "My kind of fun, your kind of fun, or a different kind of fun?"

"Oh, definitely my kind of fun," Yusei hummed, shoving a bite of rice into his mouth and enjoying the heat of it - it'd been a while since they'd last had such a spicy dish before, and he'd actually been meaning to ask him about making something with ghost pepper again...

Needless to say, Judai was right to be worried because Yusei did get to pull out that crying, begging-for-mercy laughter out of him about thirty minutes later. He even got to hold it over him that it'd helped tremendously with stabilizing his senses, and it was cute to see Judai pout about it while subconsciously moving his hands to cover his weak spots.


	247. Monthly Activities

_**9/4/19**_

Yusei, as he needed to, spent a couple hours the next day reporting into his work about their success in clearing out the reactor facility, so Judai spent those few hours resting in bed and carefully playing around with some bright paints and pens. He wasn't fully back to normal yet at this point, though Yubel reassured him that he was pretty close to it, and the bright colors felt nice to play with and look at for his mind.

He found himself a lot more despondent about Yusei's absence than he usually would too, which he attributed to still being affected by the power overuse, however it was abated pretty quickly when he was reminded of the ring on his hand; the feel of it was nice, and running his fingers over the little star engravings on the outside of it made him smile, making him think of the little engraving of Yusei's name on the inside part of it.

Yusei'd been absolutely right when he said having something physical as a reminder would help when they were apart from each other. Judai was sure that Yusei was having the same kind of thoughts himself, and he could imagine him fiddling with the ring on the necklace chain he wore - Yusei'd been forced to find a different way of wearing it due to how often he wore his leather gloves out and needed them for riding his bike, so the necklace was a good alternative.

As long as he had it, that was all that mattered. The meaning of it was far more important than how it was worn, after all.

He'd ended up amusing himself by trying to draw out a few sketches of Yusei in a dress befitting a queen when he'd remembered his thoughts from before when he'd first given him the title, vowing to pull it out one day when the opportunity for embarrassment arose. At the very least, it peaked his interest a bit more in clothes design and he had a new-found respect for people who could do it every day and not make the same thing over and over again.

Now though, Yusei'd come back with the good news that they'd given him another week off as thanks for solving the issue relatively swiftly and in a way that they could effectively sweep it under the rug and forget it'd even happened. Immediately afterwards Judai had dragged him down to the bed to cuddle, feeling significantly more alive and aware with Yusei's warmth surrounding him, and since then they'd been scrolling idly on their phone and laptop respectively while enjoying the peaceful lazy day.

At one point Yusei let out a quiet sigh, catching Judai's attention - when the other noticed that he'd turned his head to look at him, he explained, "I forgot that it was September already, which means the only tournament I'm required to participate in is this month. It's only the one duel against the overall winner of the tournament as I'm the official reigning champion, but still..."

"Lots of pressure in that kind of match, huh?" Judai hummed, getting a shrug from him in return.

"Not too much, considering I've never really _wanted_ the title in the first place, but it's still tiring to spend an entire three days being required to _watch_ it, in person," Yusei refuted, setting his laptop off to the bedside table before tucking his arms around Judai's waist with another sigh, though this time it was more content than anything else, "They're all stuffy pros that're dueling, so it's not nearly as entertaining to watch."

"Am I able to come with you? It might not be so bad, then, and we could laugh at the stuffy guys all we want," Judai asked, smiling when Yusei nodded into his neck that he'd buried his nose into seconds before, "Speaking of tournaments though, I found a very early sign-up for a Halloween tag-duel tournament. Apparently everyone is gonna dress up for this in costumes, then duel in them, which sounds like fun to me."

"If it's on a weekend, just sign us up for it. Is it a new one, by the way?"

"Yeah, it is - why?"

"Just curious is all. As far as I know it didn't happen last year or the year before, so I can only assume we made tag-duel tournaments more popular by dueling in them."

Judai blinked in surprise before grinning, leaning a bit backwards so he could more easily peck the other's lips with a kiss, "Alright, well, I already know what you're going to wear. No if's nor but's about it, you get to be my drop-dead gorgeous cowboy for the day and that's final."

"I'm fine with that, especially since the weather will have gotten cooler by that time. What will you be, though?" Yusei replied, giving him a quick peck back with only minimal grumbles at the description Judai had attached to him.

"I'll have to think of something that'd match you - there's a prize for the best costumes, by the way," Judai added, humming a little in thought before deciding to save that decision for another day.

For now, he snuggled further into Yusei's warmth, soaking in the happy, content feelings it gave him and causing the rest of the dullness to slowly start to fade away as he let himself start to drift off for a nap.


	248. Summer Storm

_**9/5/19**_

The weather at night had slowly been starting to drop down to cooler, autumn-like temperatures as the new season approached, but it seemed that summer wasn't going let the weather go without squeezing out one last summer storm. To Yusei's relief, he could hear the rolling thunder but wasn't getting any flashes of lightning in the room, so the most he was having to deal with was the occasional fidget due to the sound.

Which was turning out to be an especially good thing considering Judai appeared to be fast asleep and having a nightmare next to him, judging from the pinched face and occasional hitched breathing; the last thing Yusei needed to happen was being forced to deal with his fear of lightning while attempting to help Judai out as well.

He was very tempted at first to just shake the other awake since the sight and sounds of Judai's discomfort were quick to get to him, but then logic took over before he could do anything and told him to be careful. Judai was a wielder of very strong powers and part duel monster, and if Yusei were to accidentally cause him to lash out when he woke up it would be bad, so he took it slow - he gently went about coaxing the other awake while doing his best to ignore the sound of the thunder outside, which luckily seemed to be fading away over time.

It took a minute or two, but soon enough Judai's eyes flew open as he sucked in a breath and froze, stuck in that transition from dreaming to waking up.

"Judai," Yusei mumbled quietly, slowly bringing a hand up to brush the hair out of the other's face, "You okay? You looked like you were having a nightmare."

"Yusei?" Judai asked, staring at him with a glint to his eyes that Yusei couldn't quite decipher before he suddenly found himself being hugged tightly with a head buried into his chest. He heard the other take a couple large, ragged breaths, tightening the hug around him even more as if he'd disappear if he didn't.

"I'm here," he replied, doing his best to curl back around him comfortingly and kissing the top of his head, "Don't worry, I'm not goin' anywhere."

They spent another few minutes gripping onto each other until finally, Judai loosened his grip and pulled back to give him a relieved look, explaining hesitantly, "You- you were... gone. Because of me. Don't remember the exact reason why, but it was definitely because of me somehow..."

 _Ah, that'd do it_ , Yusei mused, easily able to imagine having that kind of nightmare himself about Judai instead. If there was one thing they shared fear-wise, it was that they themselves would be the sole reason for getting their loved ones hurt - they'd feel immense guilt if they thought it was true, even in a nightmare.

"Well, I'm definitely not gone," Yusei reassured him, smiling lightly and glad to see that Judai was able to return it relatively easily, "and I highly doubt that even if I were to disappear somehow, that you wouldn't be able to find me and get me back. You're good like that."

Judai chuckled at that, his smile turning just a bit brighter as he replied, "Y'know what? You're absolutely right... Thanks, Yusei."

"No problem," he said, another long roll of thunder sounding out right after he did. This time Judai took note of it, blinking out the window before turning back to look at him with a concerned frown.

"Enough about me, are you okay? It's storming again," Judai asked, letting go of him just long enough to be able to pull up all the blankets and sheets over their heads, giving him a tiny little smirk in the process.

Well, Yusei didn't mind the comfort, and this was clearly helping Judai feel better so he just went along with whatever the other wanted to do, slipping under the pile of fabric with a small smile, "It's mainly lightning I have the issue with, but thunder's... hit or miss, depending on how far away it is."

Judai hummed in understanding, latching back onto him with a happy sigh as they slowly adjusted their eyes to the darkness under the covers, saying, "You're warm... It's nice."

"And you're still a living heater as usual, which is nice as well," Yusei replied, getting a laugh from him in response before continuing to try and make him laugh more, "I was going to ask if you wanted to get tea or something, but I don't think I wanna move now. Maybe we need to get a hot water maker for this room so we don't have to go downstairs to get it..."

"We'd never get out of bed for more than two steps if that were the case," Judai snickered to his delight, playing with his hands a bit in front of him, "It'd be nice, yeah, but isn't is also kinda a hassle? We'd have to bring it downstairs to fill it with water and make sure to keep some clean mugs around up here as well."

"True, but it's still the thought that counts," Yusei stated, closing his hands around Judai's fingers and bringing them up to kiss his knuckles, "Come on, let's try to get a little more sleep. We've still got a couple hours before the sun comes up."

"Hopefully we're still under the covers by that time and won't get woken up by the sun," Judai huffed, both laughing again before getting wrapped up in each other once again and going back to sleep.

Thankfully, the rest of the night and next part of the morning, they slept thoroughly and without any nightmares or issues. Yusei was glad that he was able to help Judai out, even if he knew deep inside that that kind of nightmare was a lot nicer than his usual ones probably were, but hopefully it'd be quite a while until either of them got another nightmare of any kind.


	249. Cooling Down

**_9/6/19_**

"It's a goddamn _miracle_ , Yusei," Judai stated, opening up the kitchen window and feeling the morning breeze flow in, "It's finally a decent temperature again!"

And if what the weather reports said were true, then it would continue to get cooler and wouldn't rise back up to that gods-forsaken inferno that was summer temperatures again. Judai was incredibly happy about it because he could barely stand the heat most of the time, even if it meant he wouldn't get to ogle at the sight of little drops of sweat dripping down Yusei's body.

 _Ah well, I'll just have to find ways to make it happen myself_ , he thought, turning to glance at him appreciatively, _and besides, Yusei's just easy on the eyes no matter what he's doing or wearing._

As it was, Yusei had a bedhead and a hoodie on as pajamas, which was far too cute for its own good in Judai's opinion and made him want to ruffle his hair more, maybe put his glasses on him too. Like he said, it didn't matter what Yusei was wearing - he always found him attractive in one way or another.

That one thought of getting Yusei into a dress came back to mind and he filed it away as something to start looking into later that day. It'd have to be custom made, of course, but it'd be more than worth the effort of figuring out the measurements while keeping what he was doing a secret. Only the best for his queen, after all.

That title still amused him and he would forever be grateful that Yusei was... well, Yusei.

"It'll be nice to be able to wear this during the day again," Yusei mused, tugging on the sleeve of his hoodie with a smile, "Working at the desk is a lot more comfortable with it to pad my arms."

"I should get us some more so we have more variety and don't have to wash them so much," Judai said, pulling out Pharaoh's breakfast and putting it down for him when the cat sat down in front of him eagerly, "You look at them with me this time, okay? I wanna see what kinds of designs you pick out."

"M'kay," Yusei hummed, grabbing the coffee he'd finally finished brewing and letting out a sigh after downing half the cup at once, "There we go... anyway, yeah, I'll look at 'em too. You want coffee?"

"Nah, feelin' tea this morning," Judai replied, sending him a smile before starting to look at what they had available for breakfast, "What're we doing today? Any idea?"

"Not really, but like you said earlier it's finally a decent temperature outside, so we should go out somewhere," Yusei suggested, sitting down at the table and watching Pharaoh chomp away at his food with a relaxed smile.

"Good idea! How about we go exploring, then?"

"You mean... randomly?"

"Yup! Y'know, you can find some of the coolest places with a little bit of aimless wandering, and I'm sure the city has a few hidden gems around," Judai grinned, finally deciding on something lighter and more fruity for breakfast if they were going to go out soon afterwards, "If you're feeling really adventurous we can go wander the back alleys, it's not like I can't hide us just in case after all."

"Can't argue with that logic," Yusei shrugged, though from the bright glint to his eyes he was pretty happy about the idea.

"That settles it then," Judai agreed, stopping to grab a piece of cut-up fruit and make his way over to Yusei, "We'll get ready and go after breakfast. Now, say 'ah'!~"

Yusei snorted in amusement but complied as usual, not just opening his mouth for the food but also letting out a cute little 'ah' as well. The very first time he'd done it he hadn't, but Judai was quick to stress the very, _very_ important matter of saying the sound as well, and he'd never not made it since.


	250. Street Food

_**9/7/19**_

After a bit of debate, they decided to start off in the direction of the outer loop of the city, though the second they saw something interesting they were to point it out and set them off to getting as lost as possible. That thing ended up not being a specific store, but rather an unnamed plaza filled with random vendors selling random things. On one of the booths towards the edge of the plaza, Judai found a phone case that caught his eye, mainly because it was a light red and opened up to let a photo get put in a small section of it, so they bought that before wandering off again in a random direction down the street they'd found themselves in front of.

This, of course, led to a few more stops - a clothing store filled with costumes more than anything, which they couldn't exactly try but the props around the aisles were free game, alongside a shop filled with old duel monsters merchandise. At that particular shop they were pretty surprised that it wasn't too expensive for the things, but they were all too happy to take advantage of it to pick out a few old-school card binders and cases that had things like Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl on them.

Hey, one could never have too many card holders and Judai was still in sore need of more for all the booster pack cards he'd opened from the arcade a couple months ago. He'd kept forgetting to get more, so this worked out well and those poor cards would finally get some proper storage.

Yusei hummed to himself as they walked down... whatever street they were at this point, the stuff they'd bought packed into one of his larger backpacks that they'd had the foresight to bring with them, "Those old Kuriboh plush toys made me wonder if I should commission a little version of Junkurbioh."

"Oh, you're right! That's a good idea, the little guy's one of the ones that gave you his card so he's not going to have any merch... We can put 'im right next to Winged Kuriboh on the couch, how's that sound?" Judai realized, grinning at the idea, "We gotta have our signature Kuriboh's right next to each other, it's only right." He felt his stomach growl a little at that moment, and he continued with a short chuckled, "For now though, let's find something to eat."

"It is lunch time now, isn't it?" Yusei mused, checking the time on his phone for a moment before looking around them with curious eyes, something that Judai was quick to match for the sake of finding food, "Well, should we follow our noses? I smell something good, it's just a matter of finding out what."

"You're right about that, maybe that's why my stomach's growling now... okay, let's see what we can find," Judai agreed, taking hold of the other's hand so he could play with his fingers and distract himself from the growing feeling of hunger. Luckily, their noses hadn't failed them and a few minutes later, they came out onto a busy street filled with street food vendors of all sorts.

"Now _this_ is what I'm talkin' about," Judai stated, looking over all the different options ecstatically, "I tried looking up this exact type of thing before, but no real search results came up for this place. Street food is the best for figuring out what's popular in an area usually, especially in a city like this..."

"I'll save its location for you to look at later."

"Aw, thanks love. Alright, what should we start with?"

They'd only looked around for a few seconds before Yusei was tugging on his hand to get his attention, pointing him over to a certain stall a little bit downwards with a knowing, amused smile, "Over there, they have fried shrimp on skewers."

Judai was hooked immediately the second he said 'fried shrimp', and the 'skewers' part only solidified his decision, "No time to waste Yusei, they're _calling me_."

Yusei snorted at his enthusiasm, letting himself get dragged along by the hand behind him and teasing, "I swear, it's like you're a kid going after sugar in the candy aisle, except instead of lollipops it's fried shrimp on a stick."

"Shh, dear look, they have a spicy version just waiting for you to eat it," Judai retorted, pointing at the very clear listing on the simple menu they had posted up, "And because you're crazy like that, an _extremely_ spicy one too. I just wanna try a bite of that and then it's all yours, got it?"

Needless to say, it was absolutely delicious, but Judai was very glad he left trying one of Yusei's skewers for last because it meant he could immediately go buy some ice cream from another booth nearby to soothe the burning in his mouth; Yusei simply snickered at his misery, snacking away at the skewers like they were nothing but a regular food and not the evil fireballs that Judai knew they were.


	251. Parkour

_**9/8/19**_

It was a couple hours later that Judai found himself and Yusei on a building's rooftop - it'd started with an innocent little wonder from Yusei about whether or not they could climb one of the below alleyway's fire escape staircases, which would involve quite a bit of jumping across the alleyway between fire escapes. Of course, Judai being himself took up the challenge, managing to do most of it without any boosts from him powers, and to his surprise Yusei was right behind him.

"You parkour a lot or somethin' Yus?" Judai asked curiously, pausing to lean over one of the metal railings to look over at Yusei, who was only a floor below him. Just low enough to let him do it on his own, but still close enough to him that should he slip up and fall, then Judai could grab him safely with a shadow - if he hadn't had that extra reassurance, there's no way he'd have been so comfortable doing this kind of parkour with his easily breakable boyfriend.

"What do you think I had to do all day growing up?" Yusei replied, raising a single eyebrow at him in amusement before turning back to looking over the next jump he'd be making with a sigh, "Half the time I was _forced_ to do a bit of parkour to get to where I wanted to be due to how worn down everything was, so it's something I got used to and came to like. The seeking it out on my own bit came much later, though, when I got bored one day and did that instead of working my runner." He hauled his body up and over the fence after a few moments of adjusting his grip, kicking off strongly and soaring through the air for a few heart-pounding moments until Yusei's boots planted firmly on the other fire escape with a loud clang.

"I used to want to, so I'd end up climbing on top of the dorms at the academy or exploring the rooftop access of the main building. They really needed to keep that stuff locked, to be honest, but it worked out well for me because no one else really bothered to go up there. I made some... pretty dangerous jumps without a back-up plan, now that I think about it," Judai laughed sheepishly, grinning at Yusei who'd leaned on the fence facing towards him and started smiling fondly at him with his cheek resting in his palm, "Was about this high up, but with nothing that could save me if I missed the jump."

"Well, at least now you don't have to deal with that," Yusei stated, pushing up and gesturing for him to move out of the way - he was ready to join him and was all lined up for the jump, now all he had to do was land it, "I'd probably be significantly more worried about this if I weren't sure that you'd catch me if I fell."

"Just land the jump and I won't even have to think about it," Judai teased, moving off to the side and watching.

Yusei took a visibly deep breath, focusing entirely on the jump and what he had to do before doing the same as before and kicking off the fence - it looked like he was going to be a little short at first, but he actually made a nearly perfect jump, so there'd really been no reason to worry.

As he tried to steady himself, Judai took advantage of the moment to pull the other into a hug and scoop him up into a bridal carry, "Let's just get to the rooftop already, yeah? Then we can take a break and look down at the city."

"D-Do you absolutely need to carry me?" Yusei grumbled, latching his arms around his neck to catch his balance and burying his head into his shoulder in embarrassment, "I'm sure I can walk up a couple flights of stairs."

"Yeah, but I can run up them faster than you and I'm feelin' impatient," Judai responded simply, nudging his head away for a moment so he could lean down and catch his lips for a quick kiss, "Plus I like having you in my arms like this."

"That's it, next time _I'm_ the one carrying _you_ like this."

"I feel like someone has little bit of catching-up to do in arm strength to even be able to do that in the first place."

Yusei huffed and gave him the cutest, indignant stare, which Judai snickered at and ended up giving him another peck on the lips for in response. It's not that Yusei wasn't strong enough as is to do it, it's just that he wouldn't be able to do it for too long - and if the motivator Yusei needed to start working out actively instead of every couple of days at home was to be able to carry around Judai, then so be it, as long it worked.


	252. Candy Store

_**9/9/19**_

Yusei blinked as they came around a corner, getting a strong enough feeling of recognition to pause in his tracks and stare while trying to figure out why he recognized it. Judai was pulled to a stop as well, but he didn't make anything except a little questioning noise when he looked back and saw him looking focused.

"...Ah, that's why I recognize it," Yusei realized, the slight frown he'd been wearing relaxing into a satisfied smile, "If you go down this street here, then the waterway is only a few blocks down and around a few of the buildings, along with our little spot if you follow the trail from there."

"Oh, is it?" Judai wondered, looking around for a few seconds himself before his face lit up in recognition as well, "Hey, yeah, you're right! There's that one candy shop we always pass by whenever we hang out out here - always wanted to go, guess we can now, huh?"

"No reason not to," Yusei agreed, letting Judai take the lead a slight step ahead of him as usual. He was perfectly content with being led around by him since he could space out a little and simply take in all the sights, focusing on his boyfriend instead if he ever got tired of trying to find all the details of the city.

It helped that Judai was really good at using his powers to hide them in plain sight. Essentially, he was able to use just a tiny bit around them so that it made them less noticeable, and no one paid much attention to them as a result - he'd been a little rusty at using it with more than just himself at first when they'd first started going out together in public, often using a bit too much instead of too little, but he'd gotten good enough that he could do it with barely a thought after a lot of practice.

Poor Crow and Jack had been the unfortunate victims during said practice, but it was pretty funny to see them startle a bit whenever they'd pause and realize that _yes_ , there was someone standing in the corner of the room watching them, and _no_ , they had not noticed beyond a single stray thought about how something existed in that general space at first.

The candy shop was a bit cooler than the outside, which was a pretty cold temperature considering the sun was set to go down soon and it had been cooler than the previous months for most of the day already, which led to Yusei pulling his jacket off from his waist to put on - it was a new one they'd found earlier that day at a random labeling and decal shop they'd ran across and entered upon seeing the cool-looking display of shirts and hoodies in the tiny window they had; it had a bit of fur lining but was thin overall, perfect for cool temperatures that weren't _too_ cold, and had a little, minimal red crab design placed just below the hood of it and on each cuff of the sleeves.

Needless to say, Judai had seen it, barked out a laugh, and ordered a custom one on the spot, which was a bit amusing to witness because he'd been able to list Yusei's measurements for it off the top of his head. He'd known that the other had figured them out for when he'd gotten them their original pair of hoodies, but he hadn't thought he'd gone and _memorized_ them. Then, since it was early on in the morning that they'd found it, they'd been able to make their way back after half the day had passed and pick it up.

"Oh man, are these considered old school now?" Judai wondered, picking up a box of chocolate-covered mint candies with a brand name he didn't recognize, "I used to eat these all the time when I was a kid..."

"Grab a few, I wanna try them," Yusei stated, holding up the basket he'd grabbed from the entrance knowing that there was no way they'd be walking out without at least a bagful of candy, "If you see any others you recognize, then grab those too. You can probably guess already that I pretty much haven't tried any of these, so I'm trusting your judgment on this."

"I won't disappoint you!" Judai saluted with a silly grin, immediately taking the basket from his hands and making his way down the aisle while tossing tons of boxes and packages into it.

 _He's literally being a kid in a candy aisle right now_ , Yusei thought, highly amused by the sight as he followed behind and watched with one brow raised and a quirked smile. They went through nearly ever aisle like this, which ended up being a little surprising because by the end of it he hadn't needed to go fetch another basket like he'd anticipated he would.

Though, when they got to the counter, something else finally caught Yusei's eye. It was one of those places that combined a candy store with an ice cream shop along the counter, and this particular one had ice cream floats available - they had interesting names with the actual, readable flavor listed below them, but the one that interested him the most was a pretty galaxy float that was a mixed berry flavor.

"Did you want somethin' from here?" Judai asked, clearly noticing where his attention had gone and looking for himself now, "Those do look pretty good... I could go for some ice cream right now."

"The galaxy float."

"Ah, that one? Ooh, that one's cool, I'm totally stealing a little bit from you."

"Only if you give me some of whatever ice cream you get."

"Deal."

They managed to walk to their little spot along the waterway before they'd finished their respective treats, which both ended up being sweet and delicious (Yusei still liked his the best, mainly because it was both weird and fascinating to him that a drink could literally be made with sparkles and galaxy color gradient), and they spent the next hour simply resting their legs from all the walking and snacking away on some of the candy they'd bought.

It was a nice way to end the day, and they both agreed that they definitely needed to start doing this more often from now on.


	253. Certification

_**9/10/19**_

Judai returned home late at night after another successful event, which had been a bit more interesting this time since it was actually a kind of cook-off - it was super convoluted in how the rules worked, and he never even got to see who he was competing against, but it mattered little because it was one of the more fun jobs he'd had yet. Plus, he'd been informed by Edo later that he'd actually _won_ whatever contest it was that'd happened, so that was nice even if the only thing he got as a prize was bragging rights against someone he didn't even know.

Maybe he'd just ask Edo later if it mattered enough to him for him to remember in a couple days. Otherwise... oh well, no harm done.

As it was though, the greeting he'd called was met with a rather subdued reply by Yusei on the couch, which was a bit worrying. He took a closer look, scrutinizing the way he looked both annoyed and... despondent? He was glaring at his phone lightly but was also slumped over like he'd been defeated or something.

"Are you, uh, okay there Yus?" Judai asked, frowning as he put the leftover food he'd brought back off to the side before making his way to the couch in front of Yusei.

Yusei grumbled a bit at his phone before sighing and reaching up to pull him down to the couch to sit with him, stating, "So they're going to start re-building the original reactor site now - tearing it down, making the new facility, connecting all the other parts as well. However, this means significantly less official work being assigned to me."

"Isn't that like... a good thing in the end?"

"Not in this case, they sent me an email and said that I'll be forced to use my time in _classes_. Said I needed to get official schooling for duel energy theory and several other things, though they did say they'd pay for it fully at least, but _still_."

Judai stared at him in surprise before snickering, "Oh boy, so you're being forced to go to _school_?!"

"If I want to keep my job, then yes, apparently I am," Yusei huffed, letting his phone drop to the coffee table before turning to melt into Judai's arms, "Damn it, I was wondering how long I could go without having to deal with this to be honest. I guess the government finally realized they should probably get me fully certified, officially, even if it's a pain and I'll already know everything they're teaching."

"Is there like, a test you could take to-"

"Nope, that was the very first thing I tried to look up. Fastest possible way I can get a degree is through a fast-track college program provided I show I can do certain things in certain classes."

"Well, look on the bright side," Judai said, pressing a kiss to his cheek and grinning, "you'll have a fixed schedule for a while, and they'll have to bring you back before construction finishes. Think of it as a long vacation?"

"...Judai, how boring are my lecture hall classes going to be?" Yusei asked pointedly, already grimacing a little before he could even answer.

"Boring as hell," Judai snorted, patting him on the head in sympathy, "Good thing is? It's college classes, no one's going to give a shit if you bring your laptop and barely pay attention other than to know when topics change and what homework is due, if there is any in the first place."

Yusei eyed him a little weirdly, which was a bit confusing until he continued to ask in wonder, "Okay, I'll bite - how do you know what college is like?"

"Daitokuji ranted about it a few times back at Duel Academy whenever he sat in with me in class. It was hilarious, but most importantly one of the only times I actually didn't sleep through class."

Yusei chuckled before they both fell into a comfortable silence, Judai slowly starting to unwind after having a relatively long day working. It only took a few minutes for them to end up lying down, one of his arms under Yusei's head and continuing to thread fingers through his hair while Yusei curled up comfortably him in a hug.

"You hungry?" Judai mumbled after realizing he'd been dozing off, having quickly lost track of how much time had passed since they'd lied down, "We can eat then go flake in bed instead of on the couch."

The only response he got was an irritated little mumble and a slight shift in the arms around him that had crawled their way under his shirt slightly for more warmth. Clearly, Yusei was already out like a light, so it fell to him to move them upstairs.

It wasn't a bad thing to have to do at all - in fact, it was kind-of a treat because when he picked up Yusei carefully, ensuring that he didn't jostle him fully awake on accident, the other clutched haphazardly at his jacket without opening his eyes at all; it took all his willpower _not_ to immediately smother his face in kisses at how cute he way.


	254. Moping

**_9/11/19_**

"Whoa, what's up with him?" Crow asked, entering the kitchen with a confused blink.

Judai simply waved at him with a smile from where he sat at the table next to Yusei, who was... moping, to say the least. He'd gotten more emails the next morning listing details about his classes and scheduling and payment details from his job, and the reminder was enough to make him pouty again, especially now that it was set in stone.

"Yo! Don't mind him, he's just grumpy about being forced to go to school for his job," Judai replied cheerfully, blatantly ignoring the indignant look Yusei gave him after in favor of waving Crow towards the counter, "Breakfast is over there - I need to practice a bunch of breakfast foods for my next event apparently, so everyone'll be getting some fancy stuff in the mornings for the next week or so."

"Ooh, fancy... what is it anyway? I don't think I've ever had this before," Crow said, grabbing one of the two plates still on the counter and utensils before joining them at the table, "Also, Jack should be down in a bit. I think he's on the phone 'cause I vaguely heard talking through the wall, so I didn't barge in to drag him down just in case."

Judai snorted at that before answering, "Alright, and it's french toast by the way. You've never had french toast?"

"Didn't even know it existed," Crow shrugged, getting a hum of agreement from Yusei, "Those poofy, fluffy pancakes things I know about, but not this."

"Eh, makes enough sense to me. Fuwa fuwa pancakes are way more popular here than a lot of other breakfast foods," Judai stated, silently packing away the thoughts he had at the reminder of how no, it wasn't just Yusei that hadn't been able to try a lot of things. He did start mentally going through what he'd been planning on practicing the next week, though, and making a few extra edits here and there - if he had the chance to introduce another person to the wondrous world of food, then dammit, he was going to do it.

At least he didn't have to worry about Jack, who'd pretty much lived in luxury for a couple years and had plenty of experience with fancier foods. The only stuff that'd throw him off-guard would be novelty foods-

 _Wait a minute, that's a genius idea_ , Judai realized suddenly, letting himself explore the train of thought a little longer before tucking it away carefully to think on more later. He knew he'd just solved any and all worries he might've had about the upcoming holidays, though, which was honestly a relief because usually trying to think up gifts was way more stressful of an endeavor than it had any right to be.

"Anyway, what's this about Yusei and school?" Crow asked curiously, raising an eyebrow at said person, who was still moping whilst slowly shoving bites of food into his mouth, "You have to go to school for work?"

"They said it was high time I got officially certified, so they put me in college on a fast track program," Yusei muttered in reply, huffing a little as he ate another bite after coating it in chocolate syrup, "I'd rather be working than be in a classroom. I do fine work, but _no,_ I need to a have a piece of paper as proof."

A loud bark of laughter had them turning their heads to look at the entryway to the kitchen, where they found Jack with a wide smirk and laughing, "You're stuck going to those boring ass classes? For _work_?" He snorted again before continuing, "For how long? I had to take one before, but that was only for a two-month long quarter class on modern history."

"And you didn't fail?"

"Shut up, Crow."

Yusei brightened a little at hearing the banter, chuckling a bit before replying, "For about a year. I start in October and they've got me doubled-up on classes every quarter so I can finish quickly."

"Wait, they've got you doubled-up on classes?" Judai frowned, all of his old professor's rants coming back to mind and finally having a use to him, "Are you gonna be okay? That's a lot of work, like- like a _lot lot_ of work."

"I'll be fine, don't worry," Yusei reassured him, leaning back in his chair and putting down his fork on his now empty plate, "One, most of it is stuff I already know, and two, I'm on paid leave which means that there's no way I _won't_ be making sure to study, if only to get a high grade to make sure I'm not kicked from the job."

"Hey, look on the bright-side at least - you and Aki can commiserate together about classes!" Crow snickered, getting laughs out of everyone else as well.

"Watch it - I might just use you as a guinea pig to test if I actually know a concept well. After all, being able to explain something to another person is generally the best proof that you understand something," Yusei threatened lightly with a grin, making Crow look vaguely horrified in response.

"Don't worry, if Crow's not available then I'll listen," Judai stated, turning a teasing smile onto Yusei, "We'll see just how good you are at explaining things like I'm five."

Yusei mumbled something unintelligibly, though he was back to moping only seconds later, which got a chuckle out of everyone else. Judai pat his back lightly as the conversation flowed elsewhere, managing to cheer Yusei back up a couple minutes later once he'd finished his food by holding his hand under the table for the rest of the morning.


	255. Dinner Duels

**_9/12/19_**

Swirly Glasses: _So you're hanging out with Yusei during the tournament in a few days?_

HERO: _yeah pretty much, all three days_

HERO: _should be more interesting with duel spirits around at least_

Swirly Glasses: _Right, nearly forgot that Yusei could do that now haha_

HERO: _cant imagine him sitting and being bored alone for three days before_

HERO: _mustve sucked total ass_

Judai slid his gaze back up from his phone to look at the current duel happening between Jack and Crow, with Jack being in the lead - judging from the look in Crow's eyes, though, he had something hidden up his sleeve to maybe turn it around. They'd been arguing about something that he'd only managed to catch the tail end of, where Jack loudly proclaimed that they should just settle it in a duel, and they'd promptly pulled out their decks and started dueling right there at the kitchen table in the middle of dinner.

He and Yusei had looked at each other with a shared look of exasperation, but hey, if those two wanted to risk getting food on their cards then it wasn't _their_ fault. They chair hopped a little so they were sitting together at the end of the table so they could watch the duel without being privy to either person's hand. He'd gotten a text from Carly soon after, though, so his attention was really only halfway on the duel in favor of chatting.

"Alright, I special summon Blackwing - Bora the Spear in attack mode because I already have a Blackwing monster on the field!" Crow stated, the card joining the two other monsters already on the field.

"That thing is _so_ annoying," Judai muttered to Yusei, making the other laugh in amusement, "Hell, the whole _deck_ is annoying. So. Many. _Special Summons._ "

"You say that like your deck isn't similar, just look at your contact fusions," Yusei muttered back, giving him a raised eyebrow, "You know how confused I was when you first did that?"

"Well, that's Neo-Spacians for ya," Judai shrugged before sending him a little grin, "I still think your deck is really cool. All those little guys help each other out and can come back from a huge board wipe, it's amazing to watch."

Yusei looked a little sheepish but still lit up a little from the praise, smiling in slight embarrassment, "...It's amazing to _play_."

They both turned back to idly watching the duel, hands having found each other's at some point without either of them realizing it, though it wasn't long before Judai's phone buzzed and caught his attention again.

Swirly Glasses: _Damn you're right, didn't even think about that._

HERO: _least its not a problem anymore_

HERO: _anyway right now jack and crow are dueling over something at the dinner table lol_

Swirly Glasses: _Wait, like during dinner? While you guys are eating?_

HERO: _yup_

Swirly Glasses: _Not again..._

Judai couldn't stop the bark of laughter that left him at the response, which caught the attention of everyone else at the table.

"J-Jack, do you regularly duel while you eat or something?!" Judai exclaimed, unable to hold back even more peals of laughter when the image of Carly looking on in exasperation at Jack challenging her to a duel every time they ate together came to mind.

It was _way_ too good of an image, and he shared the phone conversation with Yusei while Jack huffed and denied it, but still deflated a little showing that it was true.

Crow seemed to notice this as well, smirking and asking, "Pfft- Really Jack? And you do it to your own girlfriend, too."

At this point Yusei had let go of his hand and pulled out his own phone after reading over the text messages he'd shown him, searching up something with a mischievous grin stuck on his face while Judai and Crow continued to tease Jack lightly about the matter. Soon enough though, he added his two cents to the conversation, holding up his phone during a brief pause after Jack had attempted to defend himself yet again.

"Found a video of Jack dueling at a restaurant, posted a week ago," Yusei stated triumphantly, turning the sound up and holding it out for everyone to watch.

Jack was turned speechless, to say the least, and he grumbled to himself as Judai and Crow watched the video eagerly - when one looked closely, they could see Carly sitting in one of the back booths, looking totally exasperated but still sporting a fond smile; at least it meant she didn't actually mind him pulling that kind of thing, and in fact looked quite happy when she pulled out a notebook and started writing, letting a camera she'd pulled out of nowhere sit on the table and record a little part of the duel. She'd literally just had a free article dropped into her lap, so of course she was going to take the opportunity.

"Well, at least you're clearly making her happy," Judai teased, pointing out the action to everyone else. It helped Jack feel a little better, at least, judging from the way his shoulders relaxed ever-so-slightly and how his frown went from a pout to struggling to hold back a smile.

Of course, Crow was never one to pass up ammo that could be used for more teasing of his brothers, and their banter continued all throughout the rest of their duel, even if the topic changed after only a few exchanges. Needless to say, he and Yusei were highly entertained by it all, finishing their food and leaning shoulder-to-shoulder while whispering to each other their amusement with it all.


	256. Tough Love

_**9/13/19**_

"Are you two able to hang out at the tournament at all over the next couple days?" Judai asked curiously the next day over breakfast, pointing a fork full of waffle at Jack before eating it, "I know _you're_ going at some point 'cause of Carly, but I dunno when that point is."

"I'll be able to go the last two days, not the first though," Jack replied, not sounding like his usual grumpy morning self for once because he was far more focused on stuffing his face with food than the conversation. Apparently Judai's waffles were really good?

Well, on the flip side, Yusei had already finished his own plate in record time, having let out a very happy, satisfied sigh when he'd cleaned off the last bite. He'd just ask him later what was so good about it so he could try to replicate it on a later date.

"I've got jobs stacked up on all three days, but they all end early on in the afternoon so I should be able to come for the last part of each day," Crow shrugged, yawning and leaning even more forwards over the back of the chair he was straddling, "Man, I can't wait for my schedule to even out soon... started setting hours a couple weeks back and I'm almost through the last of the ones that were already scheduled at weird times."

"A truly impressive feat," Yusei noted, nodding along sagely with his arms crossed, "My work can't even do that and we don't even have _clients_ most of the time. We just do research and then get told to do a yearly project by the government."

"Yeah, I don't envy those random ten-o'clock-at-night meetings you go to in the slightest," Crow stated, giving him a dry, but impressed look, "Sometimes I wonder how the hell you even sleep during those weeks, since usually one late night meeting leads to you being out of here most of the week."

"Clearly Judai's trained him," Jack teased, snorting a little when Yusei gave him a tiny glare in response, "What? It's true, we've seen the way you actually sleep at night now. We'd have to be blind, ignorant fools not to."

"Damn straight," Judai grinned, laughing when Yusei turned his stare to him instead while looking defeated, "Aw, don't look so sad about it. You can't be sad about sleeping in most days, and besides, hasn't your productivity actually gone up recently?"

It took a few seconds for Yusei to finally respond, but when he did it was with a small pout off to the side, "... _Yes_."

"And why is that?~"

"...Because of sleep."

Judai hummed in victory while Crow and Jack started laughing at the admittance, though even Yusei couldn't hold back a smile after a few more seconds of teasing. He knew the other didn't mind it as much as he pretended to, especially when he was the one who'd started pulling Judai back to bed recently instead of vice-versa so he could get more sleep. His work was doing its best to put him through the wringer and get as much use out of him as possible before they made him go to school, so he'd been totally wiped from working an extra few hours every day so he didn't fall behind.

"Anyway," Yusei mused later, taking a sip of his coffee before continuing, "I'll get you two the pass to get in today so you'll have it when the time comes. Jack, did Carly need a pass, or...?"

"Nah, she's got the reporter's version of it already, and she didn't exactly plan on coming up to visit. You know how it is with her line of work," Jack replied, and they all nodded in understanding.

"I'll just have to text her at some point and go say hi wherever she is," Judai decided, standing up with a stretch and a small yawn, "Anyway, I gotta go get ready - Phoenix decided to be a butt and force me to come in for a meeting with one of his clients for once."

"He told you it was because they asked to meet you," Yusei said, rolling his eyes when he sagged dramatically with an exaggerated sigh of pain, "You'll be fine."

Judai gripped his chest with a frown, barely managing to hold back the smile that wanted to break out across his face as he cried, "Is- Is this what they call tough love?"

He managed to pull out a laugh from everyone with that one, which was well worth the light, exasperated bop to the head Yusei gave him in return. It was easily paid back though when Yusei finally came back upstairs as well - all it took was a few well-timed and well-placed kisses to fluster him, which set Judai in a very good mood for the rest of the morning.


	257. Procrastination

**_9/14/19_**

The tournament was held at the Kaiba Dome once again, considering the scale of the event. It was the biggest tournament of the year quality-wise, mainly because the winner would get to duel against Yusei for the championship title, so no other venue would work for it.

Which, of course, meant that Yusei got to plan a speech for the opening ceremony.

 _This is probably the only time they ever tell me that I have to give one ahead of time_ , Yusei mused halfheartedly to himself, staring at the laptop across from him blankly while he sipped at a cup of coffee on the bed, _all the other times they tell me ten minutes beforehand._

He really hated writing speeches, and he only slightly-less hated giving them - sure, he was fine with small groups of people that he knew (at that point it was more a lecture than anything else, to be honest), but huge stadium crowds whilst being filmed? He was firmly on Judai's side with this one, fully agreeing that it was borderline nightmare material.

Even the fact that he was apparently charismatic and very good at giving them on the spot did little make him feel any better about it. He didn't see it, but he'd just have to take others' word for it.

The door opening downstairs easily caught his attention and he welcomed the distraction with open arms, deciding right then and there that he was going to procrastinate on this until he couldn't anymore. He stood up carefully, shaking his legs out a little before wandering out to the top of the stairs to wave at Judai, who was sporting a bag of...

Well. He wasn't really sure what they were to be honest, considering he wasn't wearing his glasses, but the bag was filled to the brim with it.

"Welcome home," Yusei greeted, leaning on the railing and watching with a fond smile as Judai dropped the bag on the coffee table with an exaggerated huff before turning to look up at him with a beaming grin, "What'cha got there?"

"A _lot_ of snacks," Judai replied, pulling one of the bags out - now that Yusei could see it clearly, yeah, they were definitely snack bags. Blurry snack bags to him, sure, but he could vaguely make out the tell-tale pictures of one. "There was this really cool specialty store near where Edo's work is, so I stopped in and bought a bunch so we could bring it to the tournament."

"I don't think we're actually allowed to bring outside food there..." Yusei mentioned, raising an eyebrow but happy nonetheless, "Ah well, guess we'll just have to sneak it in."

"I can do that, easy," Judai stated, patting the top of the bag with a serious nod, "We _will_ get our fill of weird flavored chips and chocolate candy if it's the last thing I do."

Yusei snorted at that, waving at him to come upstairs, "Well, bring it up with you. None of it needs to be refrigerated, right?"

"'Course not, and the chocolate stuff is the kind where it's filling in the middle," Judai replied, grabbing the bag and hopping up the stairs two at a time.

"Good, then we can shove it in the closet to hide it. Otherwise it's going to get stolen by Crow and Jack," Yusei explained, laughing quietly when Judai got to him and gave him a kiss.

"Hello to you too, by the way," Judai said, laughing softly as well as he led the way into their room and started looking through the closet for a suitable place to hide the snacks, "So, what've you been up to while I was gone?"

"Trying to come up with speech for the opening ceremony," Yusei huffed, putting his coffee down before falling down on the bed, being careful not to hit his laptop as he did so.

A few seconds later, after hearing the closet door close, he heard Judai let out a chuckle - clearly he must've seen his laptop as he stated, "Pfft, I see. It's blank, though."

"Yup."

"How long have you been staring at that screen?"

"An hour or so."

Yusei jolted at the feeling of fingers pressing into his side, letting out a startled laugh and quickly grabbing Judai's hands to prevent him from doing anymore. He gave him a little glare, but it was only moments later that it fell into a silly grin as they both started laughing.

"Maybe if you didn't forget to wear your glasses like you're supposed to do when you use your laptop, you'd have thought of something," Judai teased, making Yusei realize that no, he wasn't wearing his glasses.

He'd thought it before, but he hadn't really, y'know, _thought_ about what that meant. Oops.

"Speaking of which," Yusei remembered, thinking of the last tournament, "Remind me to bring my glasses with me to the tournament this time. I really don't want to deal with dry eyes again, I learned my lesson from last time."

Judai hummed in agreement, carefully making his way onto the bed next to him and dragging him into a hug while burying his head in his neck, "M'kay, I will. Nap time now, though, you can stare at that screen of yours later."

Yusei had zero objections to that idea, and he managed to safely close and put the laptop on the side table before curling around Judai with a relaxed sigh; procrastination was great when it meant he got to do this instead.


	258. Ponytails

_**9/15/19**_

The opening ceremony went smoothly, but it certainly didn't stop Yusei from clinging onto Judai afterwards for comfort just because he could. The champion's viewing room was very nice, and had a large couch and various other chairs scattered around a large table with a huge screen TV on the wall - of course, there was also the huge glass window wall, but it was only half the wall and positioned in such a way that the couch by the screen couldn't be seen from outside; this worked well for both of them, since it meant they could freely get comfortable together on the couch to watch the games.

Granted, he was expected to go watch from the window sometimes, but only for a couple of the matches and it didn't have to be the entire time. It worked just fine for him, especially considering he didn't feel the weight of a crowd watching when he was behind some semblance of a barrier.

"You did great, very inspiring," Judai hummed with a soft chuckle, slowly dragging his fingers through his hair in a way that made him almost instantly relax into him.

"Thanks, but I'm just glad it's over," Yusei replied, tightening his arms around him for a brief moment before pulling back to look at him, blowing some hair out of his face and causing the other to laugh, "Your hair's getting pretty long, isn't it?"

"Y'know, I kinda forgot about it," Judai mused, pinching his side bangs between two fingers and scrutinizing it, "I think this is the longest I've ever let it get. Usually I just cut it myself, but... well."

"I usually just cut mine myself as well," Yusei stated, eyeing his own bangs now that he'd mentioned hair - his was getting pretty long as well, but he was in the same boat as Judai in forgetting about it. It didn't really _bother_ him at all though, and he couldn't help but wonder if he should just keep it like that.

As if reading his mind, Judai reached up and lightly grabbed some of his hair, holding it out to get a better idea of the length of parts of it before saying, "I wonder how we look with our hair tied up."

"Like in a ponytail?" Yusei asked, tilting his head a little while trying to imagine Judai with a ponytail, "You'd probably look good with one. It'd certainly be different, but maybe a little bit of taming of that Kuriboh fluff in a hairband wouldn't hurt. I don't know how mine would work, though."

"I mean, your hair's long enough for all of it to be pulled back, including those crab claws of yours-"

"Crab claws?"

At this Judai grinned, smushing his face together for a moment before reaching up with both hands to brush through his hair spikes, "Yeah, crab claws. 'Cause your hair looks like a crab - see, these are the claws, and these are the feet!"

Yusei stared at him before breaking out into a smile, rolling his eyes in defeat, "Whatever you say. I can't say anything because I call you a Kuriboh for a reason."

"Exactly!" Judai nodded, a toothy grin taking up his face before he calmed back down a bit, forcefully pulling down his so-called 'crab claws' and narrowing his eyes at him, "Man, that looks... odd. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, but I'm kinda used to your hair being up and out."

In retaliation, Yusei gently gathered up Judai's hair and bundled it together in the back, leaving the side bangs hanging freely in the front as usual.

 _He's still cute_ , Yusei thought, smile growing a bit wider as he tilted his head and looked at him.

"It is pretty odd," Yusei agreed eventually, leaning a little closer to him and letting the hair in his hands go as he continued, "But you look good like that. A nice mix of handsome and cute."

A shy little smile popped up on Judai's face as he glanced off to the side for a moment, which told Yusei he'd succeeded in doing what he'd set out to do, which was fluster him a little by catching him off-guard.

"Someone's a little flirty today, I see," Judai stated, looking back to him with a determined glint to his eyes. Yusei felt him let go of part of his hair before realizing it had to be his spikes, judging from the feel of how they popped back up into place so quickly, before he said, "Ah, much better. You're a nice mix of handsome and cute like this, too."

Yusei's chest filled with warmth at the words, and he couldn't help but be amused that he was falling victim to his own strategy. Before he could say anything in response though, Judai leaned up and gave him a chaste kiss, pulling back to tug lightly at his cheek with a smile.

"Go change outta those contacts dear, then we can start making a dent on these bad boys," Judai chuckled, waving at the table where the bag of candy he'd bought had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

Yusei laughed as well but was grateful for the reminder, taking advantage of the moment to steal a longer kiss from him before pushing himself up to go to the attached restroom to remove his contacts - he really didn't want to deal with dry eyes like last time, and he was infinitely glad that he'd decided to bring his glasses with him this time.

And, well, if he spent a little extra time holding his hair back in a mock ponytail to see how it looked in the mirror, no one had to know. He did decide that he kind-of liked the look with the glasses on, though.


	259. Betting Chips

_**9/16/19**_

"Bet you this bag of chips that the Ice Barrier dude's facedown is Solemn Judgment," Judai grinned, holding up one of the last bags of what they'd determined to be their favorite of the entire stash - it was just the right mix of sweet and spicy, and they weren't incredibly thick to the point where their jaws would hurt from crunching on them, so they'd blown through almost all of them very quickly.

Therefore, it was a _very_ valuable thing to bet at the moment, and Yusei wasn't about to lose it to a bet.

"I think I'll pass on that one," Yusei replied idly, watching as their opponent went to special summon a Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness from their hand after getting smacked for a solid three thousand life points.

" _-active Solemn Judgment! By paying half my life points-_ "

He gave Judai a dry look, raising an eyebrow as he gestured at the screen, "See?"

"Damn it. It was worth a try, though," Judai muttered, staring at the bag in his hands with a slight pout before turning to him and-

 _So that's how we wants to play_ , Yusei thought, twitching slightly as a pair of deadly puppy eyes started to stare him down, growing in intensity by the second. Luckily he'd been vaguely prepared for this to happen so he didn't completely fall for it, meaning he could launch a counter attack of his own.

"Oh no you don't," Yusei stated, quickly grabbing Judai's face and squishing it around a bit to get him to stop the eyes - right after he succeeded in doing so, he dragged the other's head forward, causing him to fall into him and allowing Yusei to grab the chips from him while he was distracted.

"Hey! Yusei-" Judai whined, pushing himself up quickly with a hand on his chest and starting to complain more before Yusei tore open the bag and stuffed a chip into his mouth. Then he simply looked stuck between whether he wanted to pout or smile as he sat back and savored the taste of it.

When he went to go grab for the bag back, though, Yusei grinned wildly and held it up high, standing up when Judai did and watching in great amusement as he jumped to try and reach it.

"Damn it, it's not fair!" Judai exclaimed, jumping once again and missing by just a few centimeters, "Why are you so tall? I promise I'll give it back, I just want a few."

"Uh huh, sure you do," Yusei chuckled, moving his arm back a little when Judai jumped a bit higher than usual the next time to make sure he couldn't get it, "Ah, that one was close. You can do it, love, I believe in you."

The door let out a little beep, signalling that a key card had been used on it, and Yusei looked over and waved at Jack, who walked in with a quirked eyebrow at the scene, "Yo. Thought you said you weren't going to make it today?"

"Turns out there were some... management issues going on? I don't know all the details, but they let everyone go early for the day," Jack shrugged, which honestly, Yusei understood - any day where he could go home early from a meeting was a good day, after all. He smirked afterwards though, wandering over to the table to poke through the bag of snacks and continuing on to say, "I see you're having fun. I do that to Carly all the time, it's hilarious."

"Oh good, I can message her then and we can commiserate together," Judai replied flatly, giving him a little glare out of principle, "We are average height, damn it, and you guys are the ones that are weird with how ta-mmph!"

Yusei cut him off by putting another chip in his mouth, letting his hand cover it for a few extra moments to make sure he went quiet before letting go, "There you go. Happy now?"

Judai grumbled, but he didn't respond otherwise, opting instead to simply make the same stuck face as earlier as he flopped onto the couch and hugged a pillow while he ate.

Jack snorted at the interaction, finally picking out some sour candy from the mix and turning to go back out the door with a wave, "Well, I just came to say hi. Carly's waiting in one of the food court areas, so see ya."

"Tell her we say hi," Yusei smiled, waving back and watching the door click back into place before glancing back at Judai, who'd spread himself out over the entire couch in the span of seconds, "...Come on, I was planning on splitting it with you anyway, so scoot over. Besides, it's not the _last_ bag, y'know."

"...Only if you sit on my lap for a bit," Judai eventually retorted, a smile slowly reappearing on his face as he sat back up quickly and pat his lap, "I wanna hug you, and to be honest I'm a little tired of all the snacks right now."

"Same, and fine," Yusei said, putting the chips on the table before hesitating for a moment - all the other times he'd been pulled down into Judai's lap, but this was the first time he'd be willingly actually sitting on it; it was enough to make him a little nervous, and he could feel his face heating up as he sat down and felt Judai's arms wrap around him. He ended up getting turned to the side, hands gripping onto the front of Judai's shirt and legs automatically curling up a little bit as he leaned into him.

"Silly, take off your glasses," Judai laughed softly, carefully taking them off for him and putting them on the arm of the couch for now since the table was too far away to reach before cuddling Yusei again, "There we go, now I can kiss ya without anything in the way."

Lucky for them, the couch was more than wide enough for them to lie down on, because it didn't take long for what was supposed to be a single kiss to turn into a long stream of heated ones.


	260. Actual Food

**_9/17/19_**

Hours later they found themselves sprawled out on the couch, having moved some of the chairs in the room over to bridge the gap between the couch and the table so it acted as one large surface for them to spread out on. With how huge the tournament was, there were still duels going on left and right, and as much as they loved dueling and watching duels it was way too easy to get distracted talking to each other after a full day of watching them.

"I'm hungry again," Judai mumbled, getting a hum from Yusei in response though he couldn't really tell if it was in agreement or not, "I can run out and bring back something? It's dinner time pretty much..."

"I'm fine with anything as long as I haven't eaten it in the past twelve hours," Yusei muttered back. They shared a look before laughing - clearly both of them were sick of eating nothing but candy and chips all day, which in hindsight wasn't really the smartest idea.

"Yeah, we probably should've split the snacks into thirds... one for each day," Judai mused, taking a deep breath before rolling off the couch and chairs, "Anyway, time for some real food. Er... well, junk food that isn't chips or candy at least."

"Surprise me with whatever you get," Yusei said, leaning back to look at him as he walked around the couch behind him, "I'll just go sit and watch from the window while you do that, then I won't need to again for the rest of tonight."

"That'll work," Judai smiled, leaning down over him enough to give him a peck on the lips, "I won't keep you waiting too long, okay? Though I can't guarantee how fast it'll be, you know how long lines can get at these things."

Yusei gave him a reassuring smile back, reaching up and managing to tuck some of his hair behind his ear despite the odd angle, "I know, don't worry. Don't get into too much trouble if you get bored of waiting."

"Ha ha, very funny," Judai stated, rolling his eyes in amusement as he double-checked to make sure he had his wallet before he started out the door, "I'll make sure to tell Carly and Jack you say hi if I see them."

"Thanks. Good luck out there," Yusei waved, starting to roll off the couch and chairs himself to go over to the window view.

Judai sent off a quick text to Carly to tell her he'd be out and about before starting towards the stairs, knowing that there was a smaller food court a couple floors below where the champion's room was in the stadium; it wouldn't be as filled with people most likely since it was in an area with less viewing windows for the stadium, plus it was smaller and a little more out of the way than a lot of the other ones.

It was practically second nature for him to make himself less noticeable, which led to a slight moment of panic when he stepped out of the stairwell and into the crowded hallways and thought he'd forgotten to do so because he hadn't consciously thought about it. Luckily for him, it was only that moment as he realized very quickly that no one in the vicinity had turned to look at him or started pointing their phone at him, so he calmed himself just as fast as the panic had come and moved on with walking.

" _You're really worried about that one incident happening again, aren't you?_ " Yubel noted, a bit of sympathy leaking through to him as she continued, " _At least we have this little trick up our sleeves now. Of course, all it took was a small, inescapable mob of fans._ "

" _I still can't believe we didn't come up with that ourselves_ ," Haou huffed quietly, not quite grumbling though Judai felt a very disgruntled spike that betrayed his true thoughts, " _First the soul theory, then how we can use our own powers._ "

 _I guess Yusei's just a very good outside perspective to have_ , Judai replied, weaving through people idly and finally being greeted with the sight of the food court - luckily the lines were decent, even if they were still considered long, _What should I get?_

" _Hmm, go for... the hot dog place, why not?_ " Yubel mused, chuckling quietly, " _And- ooh, look, that place over there has hot cheddar popcorn chicken! I'm sure the spice-addict scientist would love that._ "

Ah, yes, Yubel had upgraded Yusei from mechanic to scientist whenever she talked about him. It'd started after he told her about how Yusei and Aleister nerding out together about duel energy theory and experimentation, though Judai was honestly surprised at the time when she hadn't said anything about him gaining the title of queen.

Then again, Yubel was also a dragon who gave zero fucks about what pronouns people used for her, so it wasn't really surprising in retrospect.

With his mind made up for him, he got into the first line of two, which only took about ten minutes for him to be able to order so he was able to get into the second line faster than he thought he'd be able to. It was around that time that Carly showed up with Jack in tow, and they chatted for the next twenty minutes about the matches while Judai waited for all of his orders to be finished.

For the record, Yusei was very happy about the popcorn chicken. Judai was definitely getting him it again the next day for either lunch or dinner as well, though he'd be ordering double because he'd tried it and wished he'd bought more.


	261. Early Morning

_**9/18/19**_

"Here we are again," Yusei breathed out, swiping his card the next day and tossing the bag he was carrying off to the side. The second day started at the same time as the first had, but it felt way earlier for some reason and getting ready and out of the house had been slow-going to say the least.

"Ready for another full day of matches?" Judai asked, letting out a little yawn, though Yusei noted that it was ever-so-slightly getting shorter as the morning went on. He'd been yawning during breakfast and the ride to the stadium, which was rather cute since he'd paused to take big yawns while he cooked and then done his best to bury his head into his back during the ride.

"Don't remind me," Yusei mumbled, walking over to turn on the screen and make sure everything was still set-up properly for viewing, "At least we'll have something different to watch today - all the turbo duelists that are in the tournament duel today."

"Oh yeah!" Judai realized, already ruffling through the bag he'd dropped on the counter of the tiny kitchen area that held a microwave and a sink, "Hey, that'll be fun. You'll probably have to explain to me what's going on sometimes, though. Is today supposed to go as long as yesterday?"

"It goes until they have sixteen people left to duel tomorrow in quarterfinals, though it probably will end a bit earlier because turbo duels generally don't take as long because of speed spells," Yusei explained, satisfied with how the screen was set up and setting it to a low volume for now until the dueling actually began - they didn't need to listen to the commentary from the shout-casters, but it was loud enough that if he was mentioned he'd hear it and could tune in for a moment. He rubbed at his eye, noting that he could feel a little bit of a dry spot on his right one, so he walked over to Judai and asked, "Can you get out my contact case? I need to take these out."

"Ah, bad aim today?"

"A little, yeah. Not too much, but I still want my glasses."

Judai passed the case off to him a few seconds later, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek to go with it before going back to picking out what snacks he wanted to eat first, "There ya go. Any snack requests or should I just bring over whatever to the couch?"

"You pick, I'm still full from breakfast, thanks," Yusei replied, well-practiced enough in switching out his contacts now to be able to talk while he did so, "Anyway, Crow and Jack said they'd be here around dinner, which means they'll actually be here around an hour beforehand. When it comes to tournaments they're always early and take any opportunities they can to do so."

"Yeah, sounds like something they'd do," Judai chuckled, before turning to him in realization, "Hey wait a minute! If they're going to get here at that time, then we should just make them go get the food on their way up here!"

Yusei laughed as well, blinking his eyes in slight relief as he made sure everything was safely put away for later before pulling out his glasses, "You're right, that's a good idea. Maybe after we text them we text Carly too, just in case so if Jack shows up first we've got assurance that he'll actually go get it because he's definitely going to go see her first."

"We'll do that, though maybe I should just go early and get some of that chicken from yesterday for us to snack on," Judai mused, passing off a few bags of candy to him in exchange for putting the contact lens case back away, "Beat the line, get it fresh. I don't know when it actually opens, though?"

"Why don't we go check now, then? We've got time to kill and there aren't too many people here yet," Yusei suggested, making his way over to the table in front of the couch and dropping the bags there, "At the very least we can go get drinks somewhere, I know those kinds of places are open from the moment the stadium opens."

"Why not? We can explore a little again," Judai grinned, joining him by the table and dropping his own armful of snacks before leaning into him for a hug, to which Yusei hummed and complied, wrapping his arms around him and resting his chin on the top of his head, "...Though this is pretty comfy, I dunno if I wanna move. I'm tired still."

"I am too, don't worry," Yusei smiled, tightening his grip before his smile turned into a wild grin as he lifted Judai up in the air and started to spin him around in a circle, "Maybe this'll wake you up!"

Judai squeaked, not having expected the sudden motion as his eyes popped open as he did his best to try and get down from the spinning, "I'm awake, I'm awake! Yusei-!"

He paused for a moment, giving Judai a little bit of false hope before starting to spin him again quickly and stating, "Hmm, I don't think you are. I need to do it more to be sure."

"Damn it- let me down! No more, ah-"


	262. Twin Plans

_**9/19/19**_

Yusei got a surprise call around lunch time from none other than the twins, who bore some good news to say the least as they both listened over speaker phone.

"Mom and Dad said we can come watch and hang out tomorrow for when you duel!" Lua stated excitedly, and they could hear Luka laughing quietly and talking inaudibly with someone in the background, "They just said that someone needs to meet up with us when we get to the station there. They even got us the really good passes for the bullet train in the morning!"

"We'll do it, what time you need us there?" Judai immediately agreed, leaning over Yusei's shoulder with an arm around him and a grin - they hadn't seen the twins in a while since they'd officially moved in with their parents a few days after Aki had left, even if they still talked with them in group chats and texts often. Lua'd said that their parents were too busy to go with them, but they'd be going with them to the station to see them off at least which was good, and they wanted pictures of everyone together.

It made Judai happy, to say the least. Those twins deserved to have at least a semi-normal family life and they were finally getting it with parents who cared about them. When they'd initially picked them up to bring them home for the first time a few weeks ago they'd met, and they'd both been very kind and at the very least seemed to have a good sense of humor from the bit he'd gotten to talk with them, so his opinion of them had grown quite a bit.

Of course, Yubel had popped up after they left and teased him about becoming an overprotective older brother to the two kids without realizing it, which made for an interesting walk home where he tried to get both her and Yusei to stop teasing him and Haou to stop giving him a smug, amused look as he floated backwards with them.

"We'll get there at eight thirty, is that okay?" Lua replied, the phone rustling a little as he moved around.

"Yeah that's good. It starts a little later tomorrow so we can all go out for breakfast if you can wait a bit for food," Judai said, sharing a chuckle with Yusei when they heard an enthusiastic 'okay!' come from Luka, who'd apparently come to stand next to Lua.

"You guys get to decide where to go," Yusei stated, getting another round of agreement from them before continuing, "We'll see you guys tomorrow then, alright?"

"Yup! See you then!" They both chirped back, hanging up afterwards.

Judai shared a look with Yusei before grinning once again, "Well, guess we get to wake up early tomorrow."

"I guess so," Yusei mused with an amused smile of his own, "Guess that means when we get back tonight we'll just go straight to bed depending on what time it is."

"Well, yesterday we didn't get back until after eleven... you said today would be a little shorter, right?" Judai wondered, frowning a little as he looked up and thought about it, "Yeah, we'll probably be back around nine or ten then, so we'll have to go straight to sleep, or at the very least be in bed by eleven. Shouldn't be hard considering we're having dinner here."

"Yeah..."

"Plus considering how you pretty much fell asleep the second your head touched the pillow yesterday it _really_ shouldn't be problem."

Yusei glowered at him, letting out a small huff, "I was tired, okay?"

Judai just hugged him in response, saying, "Aw, it was cute. You were all tired out and when I tried to wake you up this morning you swatted at me a bit just like a cat!~"

"I... I don't remember doing that," Yusei replied, looking a bit sheepish now as his face scrunched up slightly trying to recall it, "Did I actually?"

"Yup!" Judai confirmed, hugging him tighter and moving him back and forth as he teased him, "Hit my cheek lightly and then you tried to pull me back down to sleep. You really didn't want to get up so I had to resort to more appropriate measures."

"You didn't _have_ to, you just wanted to," Yusei grumbled, still clearly holding a grudge about how Judai'd quite literally tore the sheets out of his grip and off of him to let the fan blast cold air at him as a wake up call, "Bad Kuriboh."

"Sleepy gearhead," Judai countered, pulling back finally and letting Yusei get his balance back, "Anyway, back to what we were doing before - what are we getting for lunch?"

"I want something sweet," Yusei mumbled, recovering quickly and letting out a sigh before leaning down and kissing him softly on the lips.

Judai was just starting to get into it before he startled at the feeling of a tongue swiping across his lips suddenly, and he pouted when Yusei was quick to pull back and smirk at him.

"Very sweet, thanks dear."

"You cheeky-"


	263. Meeting Up

**_9/20/19_**

Luckily the train station was very close to Kaiba Dome, which meant they could just park the motorcycle there and walk over and wait for the kids, then walk over to breakfast which was also very close-by to the station. The train doors opened and sure enough the twins were right in front, practically bolting over as soon as they were able to greet them.

"Yusei! Judai!" Lua exclaimed, stopping right before he could run into Yusei's leg and grinning up at him when he ruffled his hair lightly.

"Hello guys," Luka greeted, going at a slower pace to meet up with them than her brother had, "How're you?"

"We're doing well, lots of excitement with the tournament," Yusei replied, giving Judai a side-eyed look when he heard him choke back a laugh at the irony - they'd been bored nearly half the time since they were stuck in the room and couldn't really go out at all, and not even dueling can sate boredom for nearly two days straight, _especially_ when they aren't the ones doing the dueling, "How're you two? Settling in well?"

"It's been... different," Luka answered with a slight frown, though it quickly morphed into a small smile as she continued, "It's different, but it's nice as well."

"Dad cooks breakfast and dinner and Mom helps with our homework," Lua added on, nodding in agreement with his sister, "Mom's still got a lot of working hours but she always takes a bit of time every day to hang out with us since she works from home."

"And... they don't look at me weird when I talk to Kuribon and Regulus and my other duel spirits," Luka said quietly, her smile brightening significantly as she did so, "They even introduced themselves once they knew they were there, even if they couldn't see them!"

"That's what I like to hear," Judai grinned, plopping a hand on both twins' head and turning them around, "You can tell us more once we're at a table getting food, though. Breakfast awaits us!"

The twins' cheered, walking ahead a little bit and talking excitedly between themselves (well, it was more like Lua talking and Luka nodding along, only occasionally adding her opinion to the mix), which let Yusei walk next to Judai to hold hands.

"You've been practicing," Yusei noted quietly with a knowing look, "They would've just looked over us if you hadn't done something."

Judai chuckled, a slightly prideful grin forming on his face, "Yup. Latched onto them with the aura the second the doors opened to show them, which meant they were able to notice us."

"Smart."

"Shh, it's supposed to be a secret that I can be smart."

Yusei snorted at that, turning to look back at the twins and squeezing their hands together a little tighter, "I'm glad they're doing well."

"Very glad," Judai agreed, grin smoothing out into a calmer, content smile as he watched them as well, "I was a little worried still about their parents, but if they're doing that for Luka... there's honestly nothing to worry about in that regard."

"They're doing a good job in making up for lost time with them," he replied before letting out a huff of laughter alongside Judai when they witnessed Lua run into a light pole with Luka being torn between laughing her ass off and worrying about his bumped head, "Maybe we should catch up to them and lead."

"To be honest, I was amazed we were even going in the right direction in the first place," Judai admitted, starting to walk just a little bit faster with him in order to catch up to the kids, "We never told them where we were going yet they started with all the right turns to get there."

It took a couple more minutes of walking, but they eventually reached the cafe, which just so happened to be a certain cafe with one Blue Eyes White Mountain on their menu, and _also_ contained another duo inside that were waiting for them.

"Jack! Crow! You're here too?" Lua grinned, walking over quickly to them with Luka, who was staring more-so at a few particular duel spirits that had decided to hang out around their duelists - Red Resonator and Dark Resonator were having a conversation about who-knows-what considering no one but Jack could understand them, and Gale was perched on Crow's shoulder, preening their feathers.

"We both had enough time this morning before work, so here we are!" Crow stated, gesturing wildly between himself and Jack before continuing, "Surprise! This place was the only one that'd make Jack get up in time, of course."

"Oi," Jack muttered in response, "You say that like I wouldn't have gotten up at all for anything else."

"You'll do anything for your precious specialty coffee, wont you?" Judai mused, getting a small glare from Jack for the statement, "Anyway - guys, come over here and order first, then you can go talk to them more."


	264. Encouragement

_**9/21/19**_

As it turned out, Jack's work had ended up closing shop for the entire day because of the management issues from before, and Crow had multiple people cancel appointments precisely because of the tournament, which meant that they both were able to be there the whole day (with the exception of an hour around lunch time where Crow had to run out to one of his only appointments left for the day). With both of them and the addition of the twins, the room was a lot more lively than it'd been the last two days, which made it a lot more bearable to get through that last day.

Well, there only being a single duel at a time helped a lot in that regard too, but even the riding duels yesterday had only been one at a time - it was mainly the breaks in between each match and the more hype-focused narration by the shout-casters that made it more interesting and bearable.

Once the last duel of the tournament had finished, with the victor being slated for the duel against Yusei after the awards ceremony to end off the event, they all moved out of the room to go set-up down in one of the team-viewing rooms that were right next to the track. It gave them a good view of not only the live action but also had a couple screens inside to play the commented version, plus with a couple minutes of sitting at one of the computers in the area Yusei managed to pull up some software that'd scan the cards on the field and allow them to read their text - it was a nice addition and apparently something that was generally reserved for when there were actual teams dueling together so when someone had to switch in, they'd know everything in play at the moment.

Yusei left towards the end of the awards ceremony to go get ready for the duel and Judai was quick to follow him, quietly exiting without alerting the others and catching up to him in the hallway to the prep room for his runner.

"Ah- hey," Yusei said, smiling a little when he twined their hands together and looked up at him.

"Hey," Judai echoed back, leaning into his side with a mischievous grin, "You nervous at all?"

"I always get a little nervous," Yusei admitted, letting out a sigh as he fumbled to get out the key for the room using only his free hand, "But it always disappears the second I actually start my runner."

Judai hummed, letting go so he didn't have to struggle anymore to get the door open and following behind when he finally did open it. He pulled a chair over from a desk off to the side and sat backwards on it, leaning forwards on the backrest with a curious look as Yusei checked a few of the computers and typed a few things before pulling out a box from a drawer nearby.

"Be right back," he said, wandering off into another door that was a bathroom from the looks of it. He came out a couple minutes after, wearing a slightly different outfit from what he had before.

The usual black and red logo was there like on his shirts, but it was instead on a zip-up, skin-tight riding suit, and his jacket had all the same coloring and pads but was cut at the waist instead of flaring down and outwards.

It was hot as hell to Judai and he couldn't help but stare up and down a few times in appreciation for the look - he was so used to seeing him in slightly baggy clothes and shirts that this was basically a treat to him.

"You've never seen my outfit for these things, have you?" Yusei mused, noticing the look but not the bit of ogling he was doing as he looked down at his clothes, "Got it last year for the WRGP and it's pretty aerodynamic."

"More like it's pretty hot on you," Judai stated, feeling vaguely like his brain had short-circuited for a minute there as he gathered his bearings again.

"J-Judai!" Yusei stuttered, face flushing red in embarrassment as he gave him a startled look, going to tug on his jacket but grasping at thin air since it was shorter than he was used to.

Well, there was nothing Judai could do now but roll with what he'd said, plus Yusei's reaction was just pure gold to him and he wanted more, so he teased, "What? It's true. I'm almost jealous that tons of people get to see you in that." He pushed off from the chair, quickly grabbing Yusei's wrists before he could do something like cover his face and doing his best to lean up close to him, going on the tips of his toes with a wicked grin, "You're hot~"

"...I need to duel, Judai," Yusei mumbled, breath catching just ever-so-slightly when Judai finally pressed a slow kiss to his lips, coaxing his mouth open easily with a little press of his tongue to his bottom lip to deepen it. Slowly their hands wandered, Judai's hands slithering up Yusei's chest and around his neck while hands came to rest on his hips, pulling him flush against him with a little pressure. They both let out a little sigh when they stopped a few minutes later, warm breaths mingling as they stayed as close as they possibly could.

"I know... but after?"

"Mm... okay."

Neither of them pulled apart though, continuing to soak in each other's warmth as they changed to hugging instead, Yusei's head coming to rest on Judai's head while he rested his own in the crook of his neck.

"When you win, make sure you give the camera a good smile and wave, 'kay?" Judai chuckled, pulling back to look at him finally with an encouraging grin.

"I do that anyway, but I will," Yusei laughed softly, taking the encouragement with a thankful smile - he said 'when' he won after all, not 'if'.

There was never an 'if' about things like that with them.


	265. Victory Celebration

_**9/22/19**_

The tournament winner put up a good fight, but ultimately, Yusei had far superior mastery over his deck and speed spells which won him the duel after a long time of tearing down his opponent's stall cards, because _of course_ a burn deck was what had won the tournament.

Granted, it was a pretty well-thought out deck, but it was still a stall burn deck. And it had _Marshmallon_ in it.

Judai had nothing against that particular monster, in fact he'd worked with a few once and they'd been super useful since they essentially were deadly slimes that'd swallow them whole to their enemies and comfy cushions to their allies, but damn if its abilities when translated over to the game weren't annoying as hell to play against.

Everyone cheered loudly when he'd finally managed to break past all of the set-ups, speeding past his opponent on the track with ease and a little, confident smirk on his face that Judai'd only picked up on because he was watching Yusei so intently and could see that far clearly. There was a glint of satisfaction that filled his eyes when he started calling out his combo that would ultimately win him the duel and Judai could do nothing but feel his breath get stolen away as he watched.

Riding duels were amazing to watch, but Yusei made it into an art form that one did not simply look away from.

The crowd was deafening as he came to a stop towards the front, sending a smile and a wave at the camera just like he'd said he would before revving his engine and driving back out of sight to return to the prep room.

"Did you see that?! He took out that guy's traps like it was nothing!" Lua cheered, practically vibrating as he jumped up and down excitedly, "Go Yusei!"

"That was Yusei alright, pulling a victory out of his ass when things look like a lost cause," Crow grinned, stretching as he stopped leaning on the viewing fence and turning to Jack, "Ain't that right, Jack?"

"That's him alright," Jack snorted, putting a hand on Lua's head to stop him from jumping so much but continuing to listen to his rants anyway. Luka stood nearby and listened as well, a wide smile stretched across her face while she occasionally commented on something to Kuribon, who'd opted to sit on her head to watch the duel.

"He just does well at biding his time," Judai hummed happily, hands resting behind his head as he flopped into one of the chairs scattered around the area, "He's not going to lose _that_ easily. _Definitely_ not that easily."

Everyone nodded in agreement, continuing to chat excitedly about the duel for a few more minutes until the door opened, revealing a freshly-changed Yusei who gave everyone a smile when he entered.

"Hey guys-"

"Yusei!" Both the twins cheered, running up to him quickly and immediately starting to chatter away about their favorite parts of the duel. The rest of them laughed at their antics, letting them tire out a bit before Yusei finally pat them both on the head.

"Glad you had fun watching," he chuckled, ruffling their hair a bit, "Time to go home now, though. Your tickets are for the eight o'clock train, right? It's already seven thirty."

"Aw, okay," Luka replied, wandering over with Kuribon to go get her bag. Lua pouted a bit as well but was quick to follow his sister, getting his own bag after double-checking that they had everything.

"You guys might have to run before the crowd gets bad enough," Crow stated, peeking out at the stands that were starting to empty out slowly, "Luckily Jack and I were able to park our runners in the special section 'cause of the passes you got us, so we shouldn't have as much of a problem getting out of here."

"We'll see you guys in a couple hours, basically," Jack said, a hand on his hip as he stopped leaning on the table in the room, "I remember last year, it was nearly impossible for you to get out of this place because of your runner being in the prep room. They really needed to design the tunnel better so it went out to a separate entrance instead of the parking lot."

Judai perked up a little at that, thoughts immediately going towards fulfilling the little agreement he'd made with Yusei just before his duel, which put a bright grin on his face that Yusei sighed knowingly at.

"Well, no time to waste! See you guys later!" Judai exclaimed, getting up from the chair and plucking his bag up before pushing Yusei and the twins out in record time. It was easy enough to get to the station with five minutes to spare, mainly through liberal use of making themselves unnoticeable with his shadows; what was fun about it though was the little teasing touches Judai kept giving Yusei, getting little glares and grins with every one he made.

The walk back after they'd parted with Lua and Luka was just a little bit faster, their hands intertwined as they kept glancing at each other and leaning in closer to bump their sides together. By the time they'd finally gotten back to the prep room, Yusei was stumbling with the keys for an entirely different reason than last time, and once the door was shut and locked Judai was quick to press him to the door and smash their lips together, going straight for a rough kiss as they couldn't keep their hands off each other.

"Thought you wanted me in the outfit?" Yusei asked breathlessly a few minutes later, lightly pushing him backwards into the room while a hand lightly ghosted at his neck, sending a shiver up his spine.

"I did, now I just want you," Judai replied, feeling his legs catch as he bumped into a table that Yusei was quick to sit him on before they were smothering each other with warm kisses again, tongues brushing together and lips bitten lightly as they finally let go and lost themselves in each other like they wanted to.

It was very easy to get back home by the time they were done and fully satisfied.


	266. Dozing Off

_**9/23/19**_

Judai blinked as he got back control from Haou, who'd not quite begged but instead _very insistently_ _commanded_ that Judai let him try out that VR game with the air battles and fighting in it for once; honestly, Judai was surprised it'd taken him so damn long to ask since it seemed like something that'd be right up his alley, so he happily conceded to watching from afar and instructing him in the basics.

And Haou was a terrifying _machine_ it turned out. Judai'd immediately told him exactly how to set up a separate set of gear, weapons, and talents after one fight with some enemies and seeing how he instinctively reacted with staying on the ground and shredding through things with a sword - it was a distinctive style of play in that _no one_ used it because the general thought was 'Why would I stay on the ground if I have wings?'

Apparently though, Haou used them as a tool rather than anything else, and once Judai gave him the go ahead for PvP arena battles after seeing that he'd gotten the hang of everything he was a total menace. Someone dived at him? Suddenly their wings are pinned to the ground with a couple daggers and a sword is coming straight for their heart. They're staying in the sky with a bow and arrow? Suddenly a spear is pierced into their chest and they never even saw Haou throw it in the first place.

An absolute menace. Judai was more than happy to let him have his fun though, because not only did he get an interesting mix of praise and rage from his opponents but he also made his arena rank skyrocket. Then, because Haou literally only got hit in maybe two matches out of the fifty he'd managed to shred through in the span of an hour and half, he found himself with enough arena tokens to buy one from the high-tier shops - that's how insanely good the bonus was for not getting hit during a match.

That, and the little bit of antsy twitching he'd been starting to feel from Haou recently was completely abated, which was the most important part of all. It was something all three of them dealt with where they needed to fight a little to get it out of their system or they'd start to get a little antsy - Judai blamed getting the other two's memories for why he was affected as well - and it just so happened that the game was a perfect outlet for that.

 _"Let me try next_ ," Yubel grinned, a wicked enthusiasm traveling through the link that Judai couldn't help but chuckle at.

 _Alright, you'll be next then_ , Judai agreed, already starting to form an idea as to what kind of build he'd have her use since she was obviously going to be much more air-oriented.

He stood up with a stretch, sighing happily afterwards and taking a peek to see how Yusei was doing only to find that he was... asleep?

"Holy shit," Judai whispered to himself, quickly walking over to find that yes, Yusei had indeed fallen asleep in his chair while he was working, head facing downwards while his hands were still in place above the keyboard. He choked back a squeal at the sight in case it woke the other up, immediately pulling out his phone to snap a few pictures and record a few seconds of video to show that he was truly fast asleep.

His gearhead was _adorable_ , but on the other hand... it also meant that he'd over-worked himself again, this time to a more extreme point where he'd legitimately fallen asleep. He knew that it was because of all the last-second stuff his work was pushing on him before they couldn't use him for a long while and that Yusei couldn't really do anything about that, but Judai'd been _sure_ that Yusei had been getting full nights of sleep still.

They slept in the same bed and literally went to sleep at the same exact time every night, how in the world was he exhausting himself so much?

 _Don't tell me he's been doing work on his freaking_ _ **tablet**_ _,_ Judai thought, more than a little annoyed at the idea that Yusei'd been purposefully waiting until he fell asleep to get more work done. It was very likely to be the case, and Judai really couldn't get _too_ mad about it because he _knew_ Yusei would be doing it specifically so he wouldn't worry - that's just how Yusei was - but he was still irritated by it.

A little too irritated, now that he thought about it...

With that in mind, he carefully picked Yusei up and moved him over to the couch without waking him up, feeling a bit proud of himself that he succeeded in doing so. Yusei needed sleep, but sleeping in a chair was definitely not going to help him feel better in the long run.

Judai kneeled down next to him, brushing the hair out of his face gently and mumbling fondly with a sigh, "...You idiot. I told you to tell me about these things, y'know."

With that reminder to himself though his annoyance came back full throttle, so he set off to go cool down by starting on dinner early, deciding to make something complicated that would take longer than usual. Quarrels were fine because they were never really mad at each other, but the absolute last thing he ever wanted to do was get into an actual fight with Yusei.

" _You're a good partner, dear_ ," Yubel said a little while later, a seriousness to her voice that was a lot rarer nowadays with Haou humming in agreement with her, " _Honestly, both of you are good for each other. I'm glad you found your way to him._ "

His chest warmed as the words made him feel significantly better, and if he had to pause for a moment to stop wipe his eyes with a smile then only those two had to know.


	267. Properly Chastised

_**9/24/19**_

Yusei woke up at first very sleepily, but he eventually did manage to pry his eyes open, even if it took a while to truly get his bearings and realize that yes - he was asleep on the couch when he knew for a fact that he'd been working on his work earlier by the desk. He awoke to the smell of savory food drifting out of the kitchen, telling him that Judai'd been cooking and had probably found him asleep at his desk when he'd gotten up to start on the food, which also meant that he'd been the one to move him to the couch.

He winced at the thought, realizing that it would be pretty obvious now what he'd been doing the past week or so every night in an attempt to get more work done - he'd just gotten such a large stack of work that he was feeling stressed beyond belief about it, but... well, he knew what the consequences were for getting caught. He knew before Judai came out of the kitchen that he'd fucked up, which luckily helped everything to go smoother when Judai finally peeked his head out and saw him trying to muster the energy to sit up.

"How're you feeling?" Judai asked with a worried frown, wandering over and pressing the back of his hand to his forehead, "I got pretty worried when I looked over and found you dead asleep at your keyboard."

He halfheartedly debated over just barreling through the lecture that was sure to come, but in the end curiosity and sheepishness won out and Yusei replied quietly, "I'm sorry... Are you mad?"

"I'm not _mad_ , I know why you did it - I know you, Yusei," Judai stated with a soft sigh that filled him with relief - Yusei wasn't sure what he'd have done if Judai had actually been pissed off at him or something - before a gentle flick hit his forehead accompanied by a little laugh, "Plus you apologized just now, so you already know what you should've done. But that doesn't answer my original question - how are you feeling?"

 _I'm trying to do my best_ _ **not**_ _to think about that right now_ , Yusei mused, wincing at the headache he could feel pounding at his head and body feeling like molasses every time he tried to move.

"Terrible," he ended up mumbling, leaning into Judai's touch once he realized that the hand on his face was actually pretty cold and felt soothing on his skin, "Head hurts and everything feels fuzzy."

"Think you can eat right now or no?" Judai asked, giving him a careful, critical look as he attempted to get up and off the couch and let out a very big yawn that lasted for a solid ten seconds.

That yawn made him feel a little better though, snapping Yusei to alertness a bit more clearly now even if his body still felt slow and fuzzy, so he replied, "Yeah, I can as long as I don't move much. How long was I out for?"

"Not long enough," Judai immediately stated, giving him what was quite possibly the driest look he'd ever received from him, "You're going upstairs and sleeping right after you finish eating, got it?"

"Ah... got it," Yusei said, feeling properly chastised at this point and giving Judai a little sheepish smile, "I- I got a little paranoid, I guess, about getting everything done on time, so-" he let out another yawn, "-so that's why I started staying up so late recently. I'm sorry."

"I know, don't worry, you don't have to apologize again," Judai smiled, kissing his cheek lightly and gently giving him a hug, which he greatly appreciated because Yusei really didn't want to accidentally make his headache worse and not be able to eat because of it, before lightly brushing the hair out of his face and pulling back with a fond look, "Give me a minute, I'll go get your food, 'kay? Don't fall back asleep on me Yus or I'll start sayin' your gears are getting rusty."

Yusei still managed to get a laugh out of that one, but it was also the only thing preventing him from giving into the urge to flop back down and dig into the blankets for more sleep.

 _I suppose this means I finally did get used to a regular sleeping schedule_ , he thought, thinking back to how he used to be able to pull all-nighters without many problems or second thoughts at all - trying to do that but with roughly two or three hours of sleep every night just felt impossible now, and not even coffee could help at this point. Having such little sleep was actually worse than getting no sleep at all for his concentration, mainly since getting that little bit of sleep ensured that he'd be feeling the effects of tiredness the whole day instead of only some of the day (as when one doesn't sleep, they get an odd 'happy high' of alertness around thirty hours of being awake before crashing again a couple hours later), and it had only been a matter of time before he just couldn't do it anymore.

He startled when a hand suddenly snapped its fingers in front of his face, quickly coming out of his head to find that Judai was giving him an exasperated smile and had placed a bowl of- wait.

"You made ramen?" Yusei asked, perking up and immediately doing his best to stave away all the sleepy fuzziness and focus on the little bowl of divine smells currently in front of him on the coffee table, "Doesn't that take like, forever to make?"

"There's a couple things you can change if you really want to make it within a couple hours," Judai chuckled, an amused grin stuck to his face from seeing him zoned out so easily, "Go ahead, try it."

It took a bit of fumbling with the spoon and the fork that Judai'd thankfully had the foresight to give him instead of chopsticks thanks to his current state, but Yusei very nearly cried because it just tasted so amazing and Judai was just the best thing that ever happened to him; he, of course, said this to Judai right after the first bite, and the other laughed a little before realizing that he was legitimately starting to tear up and panicking slightly and fussing over him.

Stars, he really needed to just _sleep_ for a solid day or something. He was way too tired to deal with anything normally right now.


	268. Shots Served

_**9/25/19**_

When Yusei woke up again, he curled up a little to soak up some more warmth from the sheets before finally opening his eyes and sitting up from the bed so he could check the time on his phone - just past midnight, which explained why it was still so dark in the room. It didn't explain why Judai hadn't come to bed yet, though, which was odd because he usually tried not to stay up past eleven or so for consistency's sake.

Well, he was wide awake now anyways, so he might as well take a peek downstairs to see what was up. Getting closer to the door revealed that _something_ was going on in the living room from the noises that were filtering through it, so he didn't bother to open it quietly as he squinted and adjusted to the difference in light before looking down from the landing and staring bewilderedly at the scene.

Jack and... Haou, apparently, were having a drink-off while Crow sat off to the side with a can of soda. Judai and Yubel had decided to watch in spirit form as well, standing near Crow while watching with amused looks, though Judai looked a bit despondent when Haou took another shot of whatever kind of alcohol it was.

Most importantly though, Jack looked drunk as hell and Haou, despite looking about half as bad, was still clearly drunk from how unreserved he was acting. It was the main reason Yusei'd had to pause for a moment and double-check that it was actually Haou, because Haou wasn't the type of person to cheer loudly and slam a shot glass down on the table in victory.

"Oh, you're up!" Judai greeted, hearing him come down the stairs quickly in curiosity, "You look a lot better than earlier."

"I feel a lot better, too," Yusei replied, giving him a smile before noticing that Crow was giving him an odd look, "Judai's here."

"Ah, got it," Crow nodded, taking another sip of his soda and waving at the space next to him, "Didn't realize you were there, though I guess it makes sense."

"Tell him it's okay, he couldn't have known," Judai stated, waiting for Yusei to pass it along before continuing, "Anyway, I'm glad you do. Meanwhile, me on the other hand? I'm totally _fucked_ in the morning, while Jack's just going to be absolutely _dead_ to the world."

"Once again, I'm very glad that just because we share a soul it doesn't mean that I have to feel what you do," Yubel snickered, patting him on the back roughly, "Haou's only drinking that much because he knows he's not the one who'll have to deal with the after-effects."

Yusei raised an eyebrow, noting that there was only a single open bottle of alcohol and asking, "Have they really drank that much?"

"Oh right, you haven't seen the different ones yet... That's stuff from the spirit world, it's potent as hell because it's got magic imbued in it," Judai explained, wincing again as Haou took yet _another_ shot, smirking challengingly across the coffee table at Jack, "It's also got the worst hangovers associated with it, that kind especially because of the type of magic used."

"Haou took over for a bit initially so he could try the food, but then Jack came back and one thing led to another, resulting in a match to see who could hold their liquor better," Yubel tacked on for context, "Of course, Haou wasn't going to do it with anything he deems to be shitty alcohol, so he portal-ed to the castle just to fetch some duel monster alcohol. It's definitely superior to anything here, but also Jack would have zero tolerance for it."

It was at this moment that Haou finally took notice of Yusei joining the crowd, but that was mainly due to the fact that Jack looked to be on the verge of passing out and had buried his head into his arms on the table.

"Yusei, welcome. Here, try this, it's good," Haou said, waving him over with an intent stare that told him he wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer.

"I don't drink though, I hate the taste of alcohol," Yusei admitted as he walked over slowly, warily watching as Haou paused after pouring a shot for him.

Eventually Haou smirked widely, pushing the shot towards him and stating, "A man after my own heart, I hate that shit too. This stuff though? Tastes like liquid candy, try it."

"By that, he means the flavor changes depending on the person, that's what the magic does and why this particular one is so bad hangover-wise," Judai elaborated, popping up behind him with a sigh, "It's some really potent magic, but it is good. You should be fine if you drink just that, but anymore and you're gonna feel like complete shit later."

"Just don't fall into the trap of wanting more, because it specifically targets flavors that are either favorites or associated with favorite memories," Yubel warned, explaining the magic in a little more detail.

With all that in mind Yusei shrugged, figuring that if they both were essentially saying it was fine then it was fine, and knocked back the shot quickly.

 _Shit, that_ _ **is**_ _good_ , Yusei thought, licking his lips a little as he savoured the taste - it was a strange mix of that spicy hot chocolate Judai had made for him that one time, cotton candy, and coffee, but for whatever reason it worked (probably because it was _magic_ and not an actual combination of them) and if it hadn't been for the warnings he'd been given, he'd definitely have asked for another. As it was though he could already feel the effects of the alcohol setting in, feeling a little lighter and a good kind of fuzzy as it really started to hit him.

"That stuff _is_ good," Yusei agreed after a few seconds of zoning out to focus on it, sliding the shot glass back onto the table as he relaxed a bit, "Definitely strong, though."

"Damn it, y'know what? Let me try one, I'm curious now," Crow cut in, leaving his soda behind and coming to join them at the table, Haou easily agreeing and starting to pour another shot, "If even Yusei likes it then I _have_ to try it."

Needless to say, Crow ended up loving it, and then he was right next to Jack about thirty minutes later because he couldn't resist wanting more. Yusei ended up taking a couple pictures of the scene for later, with Judai laughing right next to him and listing off all the different ways they could start accumulating more fodder against them as revenge for all the pictures the two had taken of them.

When Haou finally swapped back with Judai, though, it was even funnier because the second Judai took over he swayed, leaning over the table with a dazed look on his face, "Whew, okay, I am- I feel _very_ drunk right now."

Yusei ended up having to help him stand up, leaving the other two behind because at this point they had both fallen asleep at the table and there was no way they were waking up any time soon. Judai simply wouldn't sleep though, laughing bubbly as he practically crawled on and clung to him instead once he'd plopped them both on their bed, so Yusei just gave up on trying to force it and talked with him instead, hoping to lull him to sleep with repeated light strokes through his hair and the occasional kiss, in which Yusei could taste the alcohol on Judai's lips and tongue.

Which was very evil, because those occasional kisses were quick to melt into one big blur of feels-good, addicting make-out sessions - Yusei was convinced it only served to make him a little more drunk, though the thought faded away almost immediately at the eager brush of Judai's tongue against his, the slight tilt of the head that made their lips move against each other just right, and the light tug at his hair to push him closer.


	269. Very Quiet Morning

_**9/26/19**_

It was more of a nap that Yusei got due to how much he'd slept beforehand, but considering Judai hadn't finally passed out on him until way late into the night it was like he'd simply gotten up an hour early or something similar. Judai was sleeping soundly, and Yusei took a moment to just... watch him, smiling fondly at the relaxed face and slow breaths he took.

Might as well enjoy the peace while it lasted, he figured, since he knew the second anyone else in the apartment woke up it was going to be a pain to deal with - these weren't just regular hangovers, as Judai and Yubel had repeatedly warned him about last night, and were magic-induced mega hangovers instead.

Yusei laughed quietly to himself at the thought as he slid out of bed with a yawn, making sure to grab his phone off the side table before he trekked downstairs to see if Crow and Jack were still in the same place as he'd last seen them; they were, so much so in fact that their arms were still pretty much splayed out in the same exact ways as before across the table. Honestly, he was starting to wonder if they'd even wake up until later tonight... at least it was the weekend that day, so neither of them had to worry about waking up for work.

Judai would definitely be up earlier, though. Yusei was sure of it, primarily because he knew how Judai was when it came to things like recovery - sure, it wasn't the exact same type of recovery situation, plus it was magic-based so he wouldn't jump back from it nearly as fast as he usually would from something like this (Yusei estimated maybe a day to get over it?) but he'd still be conscious much sooner than the other two.

Pharaoh trotted right next to him as he entered the kitchen, looking up at him expectantly as he made his way over to get out breakfast.

"Yeah yeah, don't worry I'll get your food," Yusei reassured, stopping to pet the cat a little and scratch behind his ears. A minute later he put the food bowl down, grinning at how quickly Pharaoh ran over to it once he moved away before finally turning his thoughts to what he wanted food-wise.

He wasn't really feeling any breakfast foods right now, and he wanted something simple more than anything else. After a quick check of the fridge he determined that it was time to get groceries again due to how little of actual ingredients was left, but luckily there plenty enough to whip up a simple grilled sandwich. Judai'd showed him a quick way of making one since they were the kinds he'd make whenever they brought lunch out to places, and despite ultimately just being bread, cheese, and some kind of meat they were really good - all it took was an extra spice or two on the bread of all things after buttering it before grilling it, and it made it ten times better somehow.

Speaking of simple foods though...

 _Would normal hangover cures even work for this?_ Yusei wondered, letting out a hum as he carefully flipped over his food to grill the other side, _It's magic-based, so..._

He turned to Pharaoh, who'd finished his breakfast by now and had stuck around to hang out with him seeing as no one else was awake at the moment, and figuring he had nothing to lose, asked, "You wouldn't happen to know if normal hangover cures work for magic-based ones, would you?"

Pharaoh actually nodded in response, letting out a little meow as he jumped up on the counter and sat down.

"They do work?"

He got another nod and another meow, though half-way through the cat started to bob his head left and right in an arc.

"They kind-of work, then?"

This time the nod was much more sure of itself before Pharaoh stretched out, giving him an expectant look. Yusei chuckled but complied, digging through the cabinets and pulling out the treats he liked so much.

"Thanks for the help," he said, watching in amusement as Pharaoh immediately snatched the three treats he held out in his hands and started nibbling them on the counter, "You know you're not supposed to eat on the counter... I won't tell Judai, though."

If anything, Pharaoh almost seemed to laugh at that, briefly looking up at him with a meow before his focus was entirely on playing with the treats he'd been given.

Well, now that he was armed with the knowledge that yes, normal cures did seem to help at least a little bit with magic hangovers, Yusei got to work gathering painkillers and water for Judai when he woke up, making some simple buttered toast for him as well as pouring an extra glass of orange juice for good measure - he'd do it for the other two, but... well, like he said earlier, he had zero idea on when they'd wake up. At least with Judai he knew it should be relatively soon enough that the toast wouldn't go bad.


	270. Hangover Remedy

_**9/27/19**_

An hour later, Yusei could tell Judai had woken up from the mumbled curses that came from next him and he way the covers were immediately pulled over his head.

"Yusei, the lights, please," Judai whimpered, voice muffled by the sheets, "make them go away."

He chuckled a little and complied, doing his best to get rid of as much light in the room as he could - luckily he had blackout curtains from one time he'd been trying out some light-sensitive projects, so it was a simple matter to dig them out of the closet real quick and hang them up. By the time he was done the entire room was pretty much blacked-out, though a sliver of light still peaked through the bottom of the door. If it ended up bothering him, he'd just cover it with a towel and open the window for air, but otherwise he was just leaving it for now.

"The evil lights are gone," Yusei stated with a smile, watching as Judai poked his head out of the sheets when he sat back down on the bed.

"Quieter please," Judai groaned, looking a little dazed as he looked over at him, "Sorry, just-"

"I get it, don't worry," Yusei replied, changing to talk at a very low whisper. He imagined it had to be even more rough on Judai than it would for the average person considering how good his hearing was, so it was the kind of low whisper he'd usually use that was almost not audible to other people but still hear-able by Judai.

Thankfully it seemed to have done the job because Judai let out a little sigh afterwards and scooted closer slowly, burying his head into his side carefully with a hug, "Thanks... now if only my head and the world would stop spinning."

Very softly, Yusei stroked his hair soothingly, eliciting another happy little sigh from the other as he murmured, "I've got painkillers and some food for you, but you're going to need to sit up."

"You absolute angel," Judai replied, taking a deep breath to steel himself before pushing up and leaning on the pillows to sit up, though he wobbled right after and curled up into a ball to hold his head in his hands as he sucked his breath in through his teeth, " _Fuck_ , ow..."

"Here, and drink slowly," Yusei said once he'd let up a little bit after reaching up and stroking his hair some more, holding out the water and painkillers - they were the good painkillers too since they were some of the ones they got from the Aromages. He figured that having duel monster-made painkillers would be better in this case for a duel monster-made alcohol hangover. While he popped the pills in his mouth and drank, Yusei made sure to keep his hands up just in case he dropped the glass, which ended up being a good thing because he very nearly did.

"Sorry-"

"Don't worry, just finish the glass. You need liquids in you right now," Yusei reassured him, making sure Judai's grip was tighter this time before bringing over the whole tray this time after pushing Judai's legs down out of the ball he'd been in, "Apparently magic hangovers can be remedied the same way as regular ones, at least a little bit, so make sure you eat it all."

"I'll try, but," Judai winced, putting down the now-empty glass to rub at his head again, "I don't know if I can really stomach much right now."

"It's plain toast with a little bit of unsalted butter, you should be okay," Yusei stated, tapping lightly on the plate to draw his attention back to it, "Don't force yourself though, the last thing I want you to do is hurl."

"Ah... got it," Judai replied, shakily removing his hand from his head and grabbing at a piece of toast before dazedly taking a bite after missing his mouth by a little bit the first time, "...Yeah I can do this. Hopefully."

"Hopefully," Yusei repeated with a soft smile, getting a pained one in return after a few seconds - it almost was like he was sleep deprived and everything was lagging behind a second or two for him, but with an added headache and nausea.

 _I wonder if I could find a hangover remedy for that drink if I studied one with my spirits_ , Yusei mused, mind automatically thinking about the science of why alcohol caused hangovers in the first place due to dehydration and other such things. It'd certainly be helpful if this ever happened again, and hey, if he figured it out and worked with the Aromages maybe he could start accumulating some spirit world money through having the Aromages sell remedies; with the drink tasting that damn good, he's sure it would be a popular sell in no time once word spread about it.

He was brought out of his thoughts at the sound of Judai humming, noticing that he'd started to look a little more relaxed and that the pained frown was starting to thin out. He'd gotten through the first slice of toast and was currently sipping at his orange juice, looking down at himself and humming again in wonder.

"Y'know, normally painkillers don't actually do much," Judai seemed to marvel, blinking a few times as if in disbelief but happy nonetheless.

"Well, I did give you the ones from the Aromages - magic-infused painkillers for magic-induced pain," Yusei explained, watching in amusement as the words slowly sunk in and Judai's face slowly morphed back into a pained frown, "...You never made that connection, did you."

"I'm a gods damned idiot."

"No, just every time you've needed it you probably weren't in the right mind to make it, that's all."

"You give me too credit, Yus."

"You give yourself too little credit - you know now though and that's all that matters."

At least Judai's mood significantly brightened as the day went on and the hangover was abating rather quickly thanks to drinking lots of liquids and eating lots of carbs; to Yusei's relief he smiled his signature sunny grin by the time night came, even if it was a response to laughing at Jack and Crow waking up and getting to feel his misery as well.


	271. Costume Ideas

_**9/28/19**_

"What's got you all pouty?" Yusei asked, ruffling Judai's hair and getting a laugh out of him before plopping down next to him on the couch and drawing him into a hug. He was taking a break from work, especially now that he'd realized he'd gotten way more done than he'd initially thought - one of the higher-ups had sent him an email saying not to worry about a couple of the things they'd assigned him to do, all of which he'd luckily not started on, so he was significantly closer to being finished with everything than he'd been a few days ago. It was a load off his back and he was way less stressed because of it.

"Hey there," Judai hummed, leaning back into him with a happy little grin, "I'm just trying to figure out what to about my costume for the tag tournament - speaking of which, you don't have class on that day, right? I forgot to double-check after that happened..."

"Don't worry, I checked - it's on a weekend and I only have classes on weekdays, so I'll be just fine," Yusei assured, pulling him back with him to lie down, "Anyway, what's going on with the costume?"

"So basically, I can't come up with something to match yours," Judai explained, huffing a little and nudging him to loosen his grip and let him turn around and face him, "I could just get my own different cool-looking cowboy get-up, but I wanted it to be something where we _aren't_ the same thing in the end, y'know? Like an actual duo Halloween costume, not just the same thing times two."

"I don't _have_ to dress up in the outfit, you know," Yusei suggested, squishing the other's cheek a little with an exasperated smile, "Then it'd be easier for you to come up with something, right? This sort of thing is supposed to be fun, not stressful."

"I guess, but I just really wanted to see you in it more," Judai sighed, words slightly skewed thanks to the cheek pulling.

Yusei rolled his eyes in response, pecking him on the lips and stating, "I'll wear it whenever you want, you know that right? It can be something just between us then, which makes it more fun."

"That's... yeah, I like that idea better," Judai agreed, pulling himself up to hover over him instead, arms on either side of his head and resting on the couch arm, "I like it a lot better, actually. Call me selfish but I want to keep as much of you to myself as I can."

 _Smooth_ , Yusei mused, feeling his face heat a little at the flirting and the hand that had started to wander slowly up his arm until it came to a stop and cupped his face. Still, it was a sentiment that he definitely shared, having caught himself thinking from time to time something along those lines - generally it was in the form of just wanting to protect that smile of his, but other times?

Well, the other times he had those thoughts generally led to teasing him or lots of heavy kisses - Judai was just too irresistible to him when he got those kinds of thoughts.

"I can't exactly call you selfish when I feel the same about you," Yusei murmured lowly, reaching up to pull him down lightly into a kiss by the front of his jacket so as to not unbalance him on accident. He closed his eyes as Judai let out a little content noise against his lips, hand dropping from his face to curl into his own jacket instead as he kissed back enthusiastically. They pulled apart after getting their fill of playfully-bitten lips and little teasing swipes of the tongue without actually deepening it.

"So... would you go wear it now?" Judai grinned after a few seconds, looking entirely unapologetic about it despite having to have already known what the answer would be.

"No, because if I did I wouldn't be getting back to work any time soon," Yusei replied, raising an eyebrow at him when Judai started to try and pull out the puppy eyes on him, "You know that won't work on me for this kind of stuff."

"Aw, fine, I guess I'll just settle with thinking up other outfits to see you in in the meantime," Judai laughed, falling onto him to hug him and nearly knocking the breath out of him in the process, "Still, ten minutes more?"

"Of course, wouldn't be much of a break if it was only five minutes long," Yusei snorted, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him back to be by his side so that he could breathe again, "I am hungry though, so food after."

"What do we even have for snacks...? Man, now I really want to start making cookies and candy and stuff, it's not even October yet though..."

"Judai, just make whatever you feel like making, don't worry about it being 'too early' to start getting excited about a holiday. Is Halloween your favorite?"

"Next to Christmas, yeah. I just... love the spirit of them more than anything, but all the event stuff is fun to do too."

"Well, you know me - I fully encourage you to have fun and celebrate, and then drag me into it too when there's food to eat or my cute Kuriboh wants me."

Yusei found himself in an inescapable hug and at the mercy of a thousand eskimo kisses after that one.


	272. Baking Cookies

**_9/29/19_**

He'd been too focused on his work to really notice before, but Yusei once he reached a nice spot to take a break at the next day the smell of some sort of baked good sharply hit his senses as he became aware of it - he couldn't make out exactly what kind, but then again it didn't really matter to him because it smelled damn good no matter what it ended up belonging to.

It almost made him feel a little sleepy to be honest, mainly because of the warmth coming out of the kitchen alongside it. If he hadn't already known it was autumn, the oven being used would've been one of the biggest clues he'd ever gotten in his life that the seasons had changed.

He yawned a tiny bit as he stood up and stretched lazily after making sure everything had saved, then made his way over to the kitchen, peeking in and smiling at the sight that greeted him - Judai had actually ended up tying his hair back like what they'd talked about before so he wouldn't get his hair in the food, and it was just as cute as Yusei had imagined it would be. Very different, of course, because it meant his hair was tamed down and back for once save for parts of his bangs, but it was still very cute.

Judging from the supplies scattered across the counter, he determined that Judai had capitalized on what they'd talked about yesterday and just started baking to his heart's content. There were Halloween themed coloring and icing in one corner by some cooling racks, some already decorated cookies sitting on one section while a lot more undecorated ones sat on another, and the light was on in the oven to show two racks of baking cookies; they were the good cookies too, the thick and crumbly kind that were usually more expensive and found at bakeries more than at the store (even if he couldn't tell exactly what kind they were). Over where Judai had his back to him, he was working on mixing another batch of dough up, kneading all the ingredients together with a focused look that Yusei took a moment to grin at because it was just so adorable.

He came up behind him since Judai hadn't noticed him come in yet, focused as he was, and wrapped his arms around his waist while resting his head on top on top of the other's - he grinned as it elicited a startled squeak of surprise from the other, who couldn't really do much because of his hands being covered in flour and dough.

"Y-Yusei!" Judai stuttered, trying his best to look at him but not being able to due to the position, "When did you get here?"

"Just now," Yusei hummed, letting his head slide down so he could kiss him on the cheek, "What'cha making? It smells really good."

"Cinnamon sugar cookies," Judai replied, mumbling slightly as he was distracted by doing his best to turn his head and kiss him back. He grinned in triumph once he managed to, going back to kneading the dough he had in front of him but slightly slower than before, continuing, "Was going to do something more autumn-y, but... we don't have the stuff for pumpkin spice and I didn't feel like running out and getting it."

"We need to go shopping anyway, just make sure to add it to the list along with whatever else you want to make," Yusei stated, slumping forward a little and pushing Judai forward into the counter.

"Yusei, I can't exactly do anything like this," Judai huffed, letting out a little 'oof' as he did his best to push him back up but to no avail, "Yus, dear, I _will_ put these flour and egg covered hands all over you if you don't get up."

"Okay okay," Yusei conceded, all for the sake of his hoodie staying clean, "But... can I have one of the finished ones or are they off-limits?"

"Of course you can have one, in fact you can help me decorate later," Judai said, chuckling a little when he eagerly let go to go pick out a cookie, "We can see who can draw a better icing Kuriboh."

Yusei was too busy taking a bite out of the cookie he'd picked up - one with a bunch of little bats iced onto it - to respond, especially when the flavor of it hit his tongue and he hummed in appreciation, "These're _good_."

"Why thank you-"

"Almost as sweet as you, I'd say."

Yusei snickered when Judai went to swat at his arm and then stopped himself with a pouty frown just before touching him because of his dirty hands, then smiled wildly when he shoved the cookie into the other's mouth to make him take a bite as well and Judai struggled not to smile back at him.


	273. Decoration Shopping

_**9/30/19**_

The next day Judai managed to convince Yusei to go out shopping with him so he had someone to hang-out with and a ride to the store. He'd initially only meant to go grocery shopping, but... well, on the way back he got the idea to go buy Halloween decorations to decorate the apartment with, so after making sure all the food was tucked away safely in the motorcycle's storage compartment (thank goodness he'd had the foresight to bring a cooler, or else that would've been bad for all the ice cream he'd bought) they made their way in to a party-supply store.

"I don't think I've ever actually been to one of these before," Yusei mused, looking around at all the shiny trinkets and various little doodads with a slightly dazed blink, "Usually if we ever needed something for decoration we could just buy it at the convenience store..."

"To be fair, the convenience stores are still really good if you're looking for some quick, cheap things for parties and stuff," Judai agreed, quickly spotting the rather large section reserved for seasonal items, with the majority being Halloween themed and a littler section already holding stuff for Christmas despite it only just coming to be October. He tugged Yusei along with a happy hum, unable to keep the smile off his face as he looked over all the different wall decorations first, immediately grabbing a sparkly orange hanging string with pumpkin cut-outs and dumping it into the basket Yusei had oh-so kindly volunteered to hold for him.

He met Yusei's raised eyebrow with an enthusiastic, shameless grin before moving on down the aisle, plopping even more things into the basket as he went - another hanging string but with sparkly black bats, a cute little figurine that depicted a Winged Kuriboh looking confused at a regular Kuriboh with fake devil horns and wings clipped on that was way too funny to pass up, a couple rolls of Halloween print wire ribbon that he could use to make fancy looking bows for things... the list went on, but he made absolutely sure to avoid anything that even loosely resembled a spider.

He wasn't about to torture poor Yusei like that and make him hate Halloween of all things. Judai may greatly enjoy teasing him, but messing with his legitimate phobia of spiders and other such things was just an asshole thing to do and he was going to have to make sure to avoid as much of that stuff as possible for the next month. Hell, even Jack and Crow wouldn't mess with him like that - as it'd turned out, when they'd recorded the 'spider incident' it was purely so they could get a laugh at Judai's utter confusion and cluelessness and not at all at Yusei, and they'd ended up deleting the video after thoroughly shoving it in his face for Yusei's sake.

Judging from the way Yusei kept side-eyeing the spider decorations too and un-tensed once he realized Judai wasn't even giving them a passing glance, he was more than a little relieved by it.

A little over half-way through, Yusei got a thoughtful look after seeing something they'd passed by before mentioning, "Hey... don't mean anything bad by it, but try not to get too many things that require getting tacked into the wall. It was never an issue before but I just remembered the apartment owners saying something about not putting too many holes into the wall when we moved in."

"Oh, I can do that - I'm glad you remembered," Judai blinked, mentally relieved that he'd remembered sooner rather than later because he'd been starting to look at exactly those kinds of things; now that he knew, it limited the choices he could pick from and actually made it a little easier to choose something. For now though, he went back to looking, eventually turning to Yusei and wondering, "Is there anything you wanted so far?"

"I'm enjoying just watching you find things," Yusei replied, giving him a quirked little smirk before glancing over his shoulder at something on the wall behind him, "Well, actually there might be one thing." He didn't bother waiting for Judai to move, reaching over him to grab something off one of the hooks and pressing a little closer to him as he did so.

Judai didn't get the chance to really process this though as the next moment he was more focused on the gloved fingers lightly brushing across his face in order to push some of his bangs back, a little click sounding soon after he did so. A quick feel of his hair after gathering his bearings back revealed that it'd been a couple of thin hair clips that were designed to be able to cross over each other.

"Those look good on you," Yusei stated, looking very satisfied with his handiwork as he pulled back and tilted his head as he took in the sight, "Especially since it lets me see more my cute Kurbioh's face."

Judai didn't know precisely what it was about the entire event, but it left him feeling more flustered than he'd felt in a while as he barely managed to whisper out a positive response and put the clips in the basket, only vaguely registering the fact that they were a mix of solid fall colors like orange, yellow, and red.

He was quick to put them back on as soon as they got back home though, much to Yusei's appreciation considering he kept pulling at his face and kissing him whenever he could.


	274. Start of Autumn

_**10/1/19**_

"It's officially October~" Judai hummed happily the next morning, going about busily in the kitchen as he was finally able to start making pumpkin spice things - he planned on starting with muffins though, mainly because it was morning and he was hungry for breakfast.

Yusei hummed as well from where he had his head stuck in the fridge, pulling out a few seconds later with the milk carton in hand and going to pull out a glass from the cabinet, "It is October, yes. What're you making?"

"Muffins - pumpkin spice, of course. Ooh, you know what we could do?"

"Hm?"

"We could bring them over to our spot and eat them there this morning... if you're not busy, of course," Judai stated, sending him a relaxed smile, "We can literally go any day, so I don't mind waiting a bit longer."

"I don't mind going," Yusei replied, carefully pouring his drink out before looking up at him with a little grin, "I was gonna keep it a surprise, but I'm actually almost completely done. Another day or two is all I think I'll need to finish it up..."

Judai returned the grin cheerily, flipping the empty bowl in his hands and knocking it against the counter right side up so he could start filling it to make the muffin mix, "Really?! Maybe we should wait on the outing then, do it as celebration for you finishing instead."

"It's up to you, but I do agree that celebrating with it would be nice-"

"Then it's settled! Now you have an extra bit of motivation to finish faster," Judai said, cutting him off and flicking a bit of flour off his fingers towards him when Yusei raised an eyebrow in amusement. It did make an idea come to mind though, and he thought it over with a slight frown before deciding to just go with it and continuing, "Tell you what, if you can finish by the end of tomorrow I'll go get another one of those fox potions from the Aromages and you can have the whole day to just mess with me."

He knew he'd gotten him with that one - Yusei twitched as he searched his face as if to make sure he was being serious, and upon seeing that he was had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, just as he'd hoped he would.

There was no situation in which Judai could lose here, after all, so he would be happy regardless of the outcome. If Yusei finished, then he'd get him a lot earlier to hang out, and if he didn't finish then he'd get something to tease him about and still probably get him earlier than he would've otherwise.

"I'm getting my laptop," Yusei muttered as he quickly exited the kitchen, though not without first downing his glass of milk and pulling Judai into a quick, tight hug that ended up making him laugh.

"Could you bring down my phone too please?" Judai called after him, snickering to himself when he heard just how fast Yusei had decided to climb the stairs, "Careful not to fall!"

"Yeah yeah, I get it!" Yusei called back, going down the stairs just as fast as he'd gone up them beforehand; this time he was armed with electronics though, one of which he fake-tossed at Judai once he was close enough.

"Yusei... my threat from before still stands. I _will_ place these dough-y hands all over you if you throw my phone," Judai huffed, looking away and trying to hide the fact that he had, in fact, stumbled a bit when he saw Yusei begin to bring his arms up as if to throw his phone at him, "Or threaten it, that's good enough for me."

"Aw, no need to be so shy," Yusei chuckled, placing his phone _gently_ on the counter a short distance away from him before coming close to give him another tight hug - this time he took a deep breath while they were hugging and it tickled Judai's neck enough to cause him to stutter.

"H-hey, watch it there," Judai mumbled, letting out a quiet squeak when he felt the other make a tiny little lick right behind his ear, "Y-Yusei... Don't forget, motivation-"

"How could I forget, it's right in my arms right now," Yusei retorted, flustering him a little bit more before finally letting go, but not without pulling him into a kiss first that Judai couldn't do anything about once again because of his hands.

"One day I'm going to do this to you instead," Judai vowed a minute later, slightly breathless as he leaned against him.

It was only once he caught Yusei looking at him a couple times later that Judai realized he was still wearing the hair clips from the day before, and that that was probably a large part of why Yusei was such a huge flirt that morning.


	275. Return of the Fox

_**10/2/19**_

Judai found himself getting picked up from the couch later that night without any previous warning, having been way too focused on the video he'd been watching on his phone, and yelped as he clung onto Yusei automatically.

"W-Whoa- Yusei?!" he started, clutching his jacket until finally recovering enough to change his grip to wrap around his neck instead as he watched the living room bob further and further away with every step Yusei took up the stairs.

A quick peek upwards showed him a smug looking, determined Yusei, though the bags around his eyes were still there to tell him that he hadn't actually managed to sleep off as much exhaustion as he needed to yet. He was met with relative silence for a few more seconds, the door to their room locking shut with a careful few calculated moves on Yusei's part, before soon he was being cuddled on the bed in an inescapable hold.

"I finished," Yusei stated, voice muffled from the way his face was buried in his hair and partially into his neck, and Judai couldn't have helped the little shiver he got whenever Yusei breathed if he tried.

"Already?" Judai realized suddenly, struggling a bit against Yusei's grip until he was finally able to turn around and face him, "I gave you until the end of tomorrow, y'know... Don't tell me you rushed it?"

"I didn't, it was almost already done anyways," Yusei replied - he hadn't taken off his glasses before whisking Judai up and away, and they were skewed haphazardly across his face without seemingly a care from him. It was pretty cute, but Judai didn't want them to break on accident so he carefully reached up and pulled them off before putting them off to the side of the bed for now because that was as far as he could reach; Yusei mumbled out a quiet thanks before re-burying his head into his neck with a content sigh.

"Well in that case, guess I've got somethin' to admit to, too," Judai said, threading his fingers through the other's hair with an amused smile, "I already bought the potion, so if you want a fluffy fox to hug you can have it if you give me a minute to go get it."

The reaction was almost immediate - Yusei's head popped back up as his tiredness seemed to almost magically disappear in favor of looking at him with an eager grin, taking a moment to peck him on the lips before saying, "I very much would like that right now, yes."

It only took him a little bit of digging to pull it out of a bag he'd stashed away in the closet, double-checking that it was the right one before he popped the bottle open and drank it. Just like last time it took a few seconds to start working, but Judai could tell once it did from the way his hearing somehow improved even more and the sudden flick of his tail once it appeared.

He _really_ knew it'd worked when it felt so damn good to have Yusei touch his ears gently, maneuvering him easily back into the position they'd been in before but being mindful of his tail this time. He'd forgotten just how easy it was to zone out with his ears being pet, and he did his best to press as close to Yusei as he could for warmth and cuddles.

"Hmm... you said I was allowed to mess with you as much as I wanted, right?" Yusei mused quietly, dragging him out of his reverie for a bit.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Judai confirmed, twitching a little as he suddenly became hyper-aware of just how close they were and how a hand was slowly ghosting down his neck and back, getting awfully close to his tail before going back up and repeating the process.

It was almost torturous when it kept happening, and it didn't take very long for Judai to realize what Yusei's plan for him was at all.

"Good... now stay still for me, okay?" Yusei drawled, sounding innocently sweet as he brushed their lips just ever-so-slightly together in a way that nearly made Judai's composure break right then and there, "I want to see how much you can take."

If it weren't for the fact that Judai was determined to last through the challenge as long as possible purely for pride's sake, he would've been begging for Yusei to touch him not even five minutes later.


	276. Morning Teasing

_**10/3/19**_

They slept-in for a long while when morning came, Yusei needing to catch up on all the lost hours of sleep he had while Judai was simply recovering from getting teased to the brink of exhaustion - that, combined with it being a cold morning so they were even more wrapped up in each other to keep warm than usual, meant that they didn't get up until very late morning, and even then it was mainly because Judai woke up and accidentally woke Yusei up by flicking his ear.

"Mornin'," Yusei mumbled, pulling him closer and snuggling into his neck more to soak up more warmth, "Mmn... warm."

"Good morning to you, too," Judai replied, letting out a very large yawn before returning the favor, his tail flopping over on top of both of them as he entangled their legs even more. It only took a minute for him to feel a little needy though, especially after how much he'd been denied last night, so he brought Yusei's hand up to rest on his head at the base one of his ears while giving him a hopeful look when Yusei blinked his eyes open in confusion.

"... _Oh,_ I see," Yusei smiled, letting out a little chuckle before complying and petting his ear lightly in just the right way that Judai was pretty sure he could melt and just go back to sleep at this point, "There you go, happy?"

All Judai could do was let out a positive hum in response, starting to slip back into unconsciousness unwillingly but enjoying the feeling nonetheless. He startled soon after though when Yusei suddenly pulled back, letting a bunch of cold air hit him thanks to the sheets being moved away as well.

" _Yusei_ ~" Judai whined with a frown, eyes popping open to pout at him with a slight glare.

"I'm starving, dear - I promise we can go right back to bed after if you want, but let's go get food," Yusei explained, evilly reaching back over and starting to lightly scratch behind his ears again - it was far too easy to convince him to get out because of this, but at this point Judai had stopped caring about anything except getting as much attention as possible from him.

At the very least, when they finally did get out of bed and downstairs, they'd gotten used to the cold a bit more and it didn't bug them as much because they'd managed to wake themselves up with it. It didn't take long for them to make some warm tea for the cold and heat up a couple muffins that Judai'd made, and they didn't have to say a word to each other to agree on eating back upstairs in their nice, comfy bed.

"I feel like I should add some maple to this..." Judai mused while they ate, eyeing his muffin for a moment before shrugging and taking another bite out of it - he had to be a little careful because his teeth were sharper right now thanks to the potion, but it was a simple enough matter to deal with.

"It's really good as is still," Yusei complimented, finishing his current bite before sending him a smile, "The little crumbles you put on top are probably my favorite part."

"Yeah, those are my favorite part too," Judai laughed, leaning more into his side with a content sigh, "So what are we doing today? We're a little limited on options here, though I know we were planning on just relaxing today anyway."

"I don't know what exactly, but I do know that whatever it is, I'll be capitalizing on the fact you told me I get to mess with you as much as I want for the day," Yusei replied, smirking at him with an intent look that made Judai feel that nice, tight feeling of smallness in his chest that only Yusei could give him, "Speaking of which..."

He smoothly stole his muffin out of his hands, pulling down the wrapping more before holding it up to his mouth with a grin, "Say 'ah'."

Judai took a moment to process the action before realizing what he wanted him to do and opening his mouth just wide enough to take a bite out of the side. He couldn't help the tiny little smile that crossed his face as he looked back at Yusei, leaning a little more into his side as he chewed as if it'd get rid of some of the odd shyness that'd appeared once again.

"What happened to my cute boyfriend that was always too shy to flirt?" Judai wondered quietly, sharing a look with Yusei before they both broke out into wider grins and laughter.

"I believe _someone_ flirted the shyness right out of him," Yusei said, reaching up and petting his ears again with a fond look, "Though it's definitely still there, at least he can fight back now, hmm?"

He made Judai finish the rest of the muffin by feeding it to him, letting out amused chuckles every time he couldn't help but let some crumbs drop to the sheets and teasing him lightly by calling him messy; it was a little embarrassing, but on the bright side Judai managed to shut him up for a bit by giving him puppy eyes afterwards and pretty much crawling into his lap for some kisses.


	277. Sticker Pranks

_**10/4/19**_

It didn't take very long for Judai to remember that he could talk to Pharaoh at the moment when they finally exited their room again, so they started chatting away while Yusei made some more tea for both of them with honey (no coffee for the time being - it was always good to take a break from caffeine if possible, after all, even if it was just for a little bit). Like last time, Yusei let himself get used as a pillow while they talked, perfectly content with cuddling Judai for the time being and zoning out for a bit on his phone after double-checking that he'd remembered to wear his glasses downstairs.

"I see... and then what happened? Wait, they did what? Why?"

A loud meow rang out in answer.

"Oh, well that sucks. At least you were there to save the day, or that would've been really bad... Oh! Oh yeah, so on the day of the tournament- you already know? Okay, that helps things a lot, now I don't have to worry about you then."

Pharaoh'd adopted an almost proud look at the statement, meowing a little quieter this time before evidently moving on to a different topic. The back and forth conversation between the two went on for a couple minutes more before Pharaoh eventually must've gotten either bored or hungry, letting out a noisy purr before darting over and out the open kitchen window.

"He got hungry," Judai confirmed, seeing Yusei's curious look towards the window when he looked up at his make-shift pillow, "Said he'd found a kitchen of all things at some place in one of the fancier districts that was owned by someone with kids, and the kids were always eager to play with him and give him treats without always meaning to."

"Sounds like Pharaoh's type of haunt," Yusei chuckled, pulling a laugh out of Judai at the unexpected joke as they leaned into each and drank their tea.

"Getting into the Halloween spirit, I see," Judai grinned, looking very pleased with himself - Yusei noted that the fox ears and tail really only made the sight look more mischievous, and if he hadn't already witnessed this type of Judai before he'd probably have been frozen in slight shock from the cuteness.

"It's a little hard not to when the entire apartment has been decorated for it," Yusei replied, waving pointedly around the room with a raised brow; the tied Halloween accent ribbon on anything and everything that it could go neatly on and the streamers that took up space on the walls so they weren't blank were the first things to catch his attention, and the littler decorations like the Kuriboh figurine they'd bought were put on the coffee table and kitchen table and the next easiest to find.

"Well, I hope you're ready for more Halloween spirit because I just thought of something we could do to pass the time," Judai stated proudly, grin turning into a wide smirk as he continued, "Halloween themed prank on Jack and Crow!"

"Predictable," Yusei snorted, thinking back to the first time Judai'd been under the potion effects - he'd wanted to pull pranks then as well, and it was up to Yusei to make sure it all went as smoothly as possible, "Alright, I'll bite - what's the plan this time? Not cut-outs again, I'd assume."

"Not cut-outs," Judai agreed, standing up and turning back around to face him, tail wagging excitedly back and forth, "Stickers."

"Stickers? How're we going to make stickers?" Yusei wondered, seeing the merit in the idea but not entirely sure how they were meant to execute it - he'd never had to make stickers before so he didn't have a clue how one went about doing so. If they could make them, though, it meant that they could make a whole bunch and stick them in hidden away places where they'd least expect it, like on the back of a drawer or other places - it'd work like the cut-outs, except allow for an extra layer of surprise because they'd be physically stuck onto a surface which allowed for a little more wriggle room placement-wise.

"Ah- right, okay, here's how it works - there's special paper out there you can buy that's sticker paper, and you can just print what you want onto it then cut it out. It's the cheapest and simplest way since it works with any printer, for the most part," Judai explained, tossing him a smile as he gestured vaguely towards their room, "I bought some during that spree I went on a while ago where I bought all those craft supplies and never used any yet, so we've got a bunch we can experiment on. Hell, if we're too lazy to make a digital drawing we can even just draw right onto the paper instead and cut it out - all that matters is that we manage to stick a few in the bathrooms and stuff and scare the shit outta them when they open the cabinets for the first time."

"If you weren't a cute fox right now I'd dare say that you were devilish, not mischievous," Yusei mused, reaching out and gently grabbing the distracting tail to stroke it, grinning when he managed to fluster Judai a little in the process.

"Hey, not fair... and devilish?" Judai paused, mulling over the word with a thoughtful look that had Yusei letting go of his tail to let him think unhindered, "Devilish... wait... that's it!" He smiled brightly, much more innocently and bubbly in nature compared the smirks he'd been sporting until now, laughing as he explained, "We can be a devil and angel duo for the tournament! It's perfect!"

Yusei hummed, glad that he'd been able to help him figure that out finally even if he hadn't exactly meant to - it was something that'd been bugging Judai for a while now, so to hear him finally make a decision and be sure about it was nice, "Who'll be what?"

"You'll be the angel and I'll be the devil," Judai said, nodding to himself determinedly, "Yeah, that'll work. I'll just have to design the outfit to be a little more on the darker side for your costume, don't want to clash with your hair too much, and then for mine I can draw some stuff from Yubel..."

"Why don't you go write it down real fast in your notebook, then we can go work on those stickers?" Yusei suggested, standing up with a stretch and leaning down to peck him on the forehead in amusement.

He'd have to tease him a bit about automatically assuming him to be the angel of the duo, though, considering how often Yusei remembered himself thinking of Judai as being an angel instead.


	278. Devilish Debate

_**10/5/19**_

They'd finished up their prank just in time to start making dinner together, which they eventually decided would be pasta since it was extremely easy and didn't take long to make, just in time for Crow and Jack to return home so they wouldn't know they'd done anything at all... Well, beyond the fact that Judai was currently under the potion's effects, which considering last time was a pretty big hint that they'd done something.

Still, dinner'd been as peaceful an affair as one can get when it involved all four of them, and they'd decided to retreat early to lock themselves in their room while the other two were on dish duty to do their part of helping the process; this way, when the first few stickers started to be found, they'd be safe to laugh freely and loudly from the confines of their room while the other two would inevitably start to pool together information and get exasperated beyond belief.

While they waited for that to go down though, they were cuddling on the bed, only about an hour left until the potion was set to wear off - Yusei was making the most out of the time left, holding Judai close in his arms with his head buried into his hair, lightly stroking the ears that were close to his face with one hand that snaked up from around his shoulders while the other kept Judai balanced in his lap, mainly because of the little bit of space that was needed between them in order to not squish his tail painfully. Judai was leaning back into him with light little hums of contentment every once in a while and, judging from the way his head seemed to dip to the side a tiny bit before suddenly fixing itself, was starting to doze off from all of the attention.

 _I don't think I'll ever get tired of this_ , Yusei thought, sighing softly into fluffy hair and ears under him and brightening at the way Judai seemed to lean even more into him upon feeling that burst of warmth from it. It was a novel concept to him still to be honest, much like how a lot of the more magical things in his life were, but he wouldn't trade them for the world - it made everything so much more interesting and added an extra element of surprise.

Plus, it was what brought him Judai, and having the love of his life was arguably the most important reason he didn't question anything like that nowadays.

"You feelin' better after today?" Judai asked quietly, voice tinted with tiredness as he turned his head a little upwards as if he could somehow look at him if he did, "You were super stressed out about the deadline, I could tell. Especially after the whole sleepin' thing."

"That obvious even afterwards, huh?" Yusei mused, chuckling as he mumbled back in reply, "Much better. It's hard to turn off my brain for a day usually, but this helped a lot. Thanks, you foxy devil."

"I'll proudly be a foxy devil if I can help out my sweet angel," Judai replied easily, not even a second of hesitation wasted to flirt back even while he was half-asleep. Yusei couldn't help but hug him tightly for that, almost literally squeezing a laugh out of him and a quick turn of the head to give him a peck on the cheek.

"I'm not nearly as angelic as you're making me out to be," Yusei stated lowly, suddenly flipping Judai around and under him so he was on top and hovering with a smirk, "Do I need to remind you of that?"

"Nah, but you're definitely more angelic than me," Judai smirked back, reaching up pulling him down roughly next to him before rolling on top of him partially to keep him there, "That's why you get to be the angel and I get to be the devil."

"You just _want_ to be the one in the devil outfit 'cause you plan to let your wings out."

"That's very true, but you're also super cute and I've got you beat in the devilish part. Hell, look - I'm literally a mischievous fox right now, just for you~"

Yusei rolled his eyes, pulling him down into a kiss to stop the teasing and immediately pressing his tongue between his lips to catch him off-guard. That little moment gave him just enough time to also grab at his tail and stroke the base of it, which ended up giving him enough time to flip their position once again and catch Judai's hands in his; Judai's muffled noises of surprise quickly gave way to soft little gasps and sighs as the kiss roughened, lips feeling bruised as warm tongues fought with each other and brushed past lips and teeth.

And then, of course, came the angry yell they'd been expecting to happen and they broke apart, sharing a look before they burst out into laughter.

"We'll finish later," Yusei promised, whispering quietly into Judai's ear and licking the base of the fluff after since he knew how badly it'd affect him.

If it weren't for the fact they'd spent nearly all day working on this prank, he was sure Judai would've just flat-out ignored the yelling and pulled him back down for more with the little shiver he gave and the look he pinned him with in response.


	279. Sweet Morning

**_10/6/19_**

They were finally able to go outside the next morning to have that breakfast picnic they'd been talking about, so after a little bit of messing around in the kitchen so that Judai could whip up something extra that he wouldn't let Yusei see, they packed everything up and set off for their spot by the bridge.

"I am _so_ happy it's cool again," Judai sighed happily, pressing his cheek into Yusei's back as they easily sped through the light morning traffic, "No more sweating at five o'clock in the morning because we woke up and somehow still had the blankets covering us, and we can actually go outside to enjoy the weather."

"Can't disagree with you there," Yusei replied, thoroughly enjoying the cool breeze that whipped at them because it really made the cold settle in - it wasn't something he'd felt in months and it was a nice feeling he wholeheartedly welcomed back. Besides, he actually preferred cold weather since it meant he could layer in the jackets Judai had found him and not get pushed around in bed at night because it was too hot for them to be huddled together without getting uncomfortably warm.

Judai hummed, staying silent for another few minutes before finally asking, "When do you think the morning fog will go away?"

"It'll probably start to fade in about thirty minutes," he answered, making one of the last turns before they needed to make, "Why?"

"Just wonderin' 'cause the bridge isn't very easy to see right now, it's covered in fog... I like it, don't get me wrong, but I want to be outside in some sunshine for once without feeling like my skin is burning off," Judai said, grinning into his neck as he leaned up close, "And I wanna see you in that morning glow, of course."

"Of course," Yusei repeated in amusement, slowing down and coming to a complete stop before kicking the stand down, "We're here."

"Good, 'cause I'm starving!" Judai cheered, hopping off first and holding out his helmet for Yusei to take after shaking his hair out; it only made it look a little messier than usual, which was cute because it made him look even more like a fluffy Kuriboh.

"Nice hair," Yusei chuckled, laughing harder when Judai rolled his eyes and lightly swatted at his arm.

"Uh huh, like yours is any better," Judai snorted, reaching up and patting his head now that he'd taken his helmet off, "We both have helmet hair."

"No, I have helmet hair, you have Kuriboh hair."

"Oh shush - less talking, more getting ready and eating."

Yusei complied at the reminder of food, putting the helmets away and following behind Judai after locking everything up. Judai'd grabbed the cooler of food, revealing two containers that he was quick to take out and pass one of to Yusei along with a spoon.

"A spoon?" Yusei blinked, simply getting a hand wave from Judai to open it, "Alright then, here goes... wait, ice cream?"

"It's on top of a muffin that I absolutely roasted in the microwave to make sure it'd stay warm on the trip here," Judai explained with a smile, leaning over a bit to point it out, "See? It's broken up to be more like... like a sweet corn pancake? Uh... basically, that's a pancake made with sweet corn that's really crumbly and breaks apart a lot easier into chunks, so it's good with stuff like ice cream. It's a sweet and savory type of breakfast, I just made it with a muffin instead because that's what we had."

At this point Yusei had already scooped out a bite, making sure to grab both some of the ice cream (vanilla, he noted) and the muffin in one go, and it was just like Judai'd said - sweet and savory, and it was a combination he hadn't thought of before but made sense now that he'd tried it. He was glad Judai'd taken the time to explain it though, because he'd had no idea pancakes could even be made with corn and definitely had no idea what the texture of such a thing would be like.

If it were like this though, he definitely would like to try it some time.

"It's sweet, I like it," Yusei stated, sending him a thankful smile before it turned into a little smirk as he leaned down and stole a quick kiss before going back to eating, "Thanks, Judai."

"No problem," Judai replied, a bright smile gracing his face once he'd fully processed what'd happened, "I'll make sure to make the other thing for you, by the way. I'm not gonna explain it to you then just not make it, after all."

"I figured that'd be the case," Yusei said, letting the ice cream of his next bite melt in his mouth a little so he could savor the flavor of the whole thing, "You eat now too - unless you want me to feed you?"

"I can do it, sheesh" Judai mumbled, pouting a little at him jokingly as he popped open his own container and grabbed out a spoon for himself, "Besides, if you miss my mouth guess where that ice cream's going? All over my shirt, dammit."

"My mouth wouldn't miss yours, though."

"I'm thinking I need to 'accidentally' miss your mouth with some ice cream and see how you like it when your shirts covered in it."

They stared seriously at each other before they cracked, breaking out into laughter as they leaned together and ate and chatted while enjoying the sight of the morning sun breaking through the fog out by the bridge.


	280. Magic Solutions

_**10/7/19**_

They finished eating relatively quickly, if only so that the ice cream didn't melt too much before they could eat it. Afterwards, they packed everything back up and locked it back in the storage compartment, then went right back to sitting on the bench and enjoying the sun that'd come out and the sight granted to them as a result.

"Didn't I say something about sleeping here before?" Judai mused, stretching out a little from where he was leaning on Yusei's shoulder and letting a relaxed sigh escape him, "I could've sworn I did."

"Well, did or didn't, you can sleep now if you want," Yusei replied, pecking his forehead and getting a laugh out of him before turning back to the view, "It is nice weather though... reminds me of that day we went to the Kaiba Dome before that tournament you had there."

"Oh yeah! Man, that was before summer hit, wasn't it?" Judai remembered, perking up as he also remembered, "Hey wait, that's when I mentioned it! We fell asleep there and I said something about finding all the city's hidden napping spots."

"That sounds about right," Yusei agreed, shrugging after a few moments of thinking, "Anyway, _did_ you want to sleep? I don't mind taking a nap, but I need to put a few extra locks on the bike then first."

"Eh... maybe in a bit. I wanna enjoy this more," Judai answered, hugging his arm and turning his head to look up at him with an honest smile, "I like talking with you like this."

Yusei returned the smile, leaning down and stealing another kiss for good measure because he simply couldn't see that scene and _not_ do so - it might as well be a crime to not kiss Judai when he was being cute like that, "I like it, too. So... what're the plans for later today anyway?"

"Starting on the costumes," Judai replied, turning back to the watch the waves in the water while starting to kick at the ground absent-mindedly, "Better to start on them earlier rather than later so I can work out any kinks in them that pop up. I've got the overall designs of both sketched out, but I'm still trying to decide on what I want to do about the wings..."

Yusei hummed, idly moving one leg to press to Judai's so he'd notice the little tick he had before saying, "Let me guess, you want to use your wings but don't know how to implement it without making it obvious that they're real."

"That's a very good guess," Judai chuckled, noticing his tapping legs finally and slowing them down, "Yeah, you're right, but I mean... I could probably just wear a shirt or something that's the same color as them to hide the fact that it's just magically going through clothing without piercing it. My main issue is on how to give _you_ wings, especially if I end up using my own during the tournament."

"I don't _have_ to have magic wings if you have magic wings, you know," Yusei drawled, poking his nose lightly in jest, "Besides, if you wanted me to have actual wings, couldn't we just find a spell card or something that did so? it's not like we can't keep them summoned for five hours, let alone even a whole day."

"Ah, that's my genius gear-head," Judai grinned, "Thanks for that one. You got any spells then that you think will give you wings?"

"Silver Wing," Yusei immediately replied, knowing his deck inside and out, even without it in front of him, "Here, give me a minute to pull it out." He waited patiently for a moment for Judai to let go, eventually stating, "I need my arm, dear."

"Right! Right, sorry," Judai laughed, sending him a sheepish look, "I think I'm starting to doze a little, or at the very least zone out."

"We can curl up for a nap after I test this," Yusei reassured him, once again unable to help leaning over and kissing him quickly before shuffling through his deck and finding the card in record speed, "Found it. So I just use it like a spell card, thinking of targeting myself?"

"You've got it. Make sure you stand up first though, don't want wings popping out and sweeping the bench away and in half," Judai suggested, scooting over to give him room to do so.

He hadn't thought of that and had been about to just materialize them, so thank goodness Judai remembered where they were at the moment. Once he was up and he'd taken a moment to stretch out his legs, he grabbed the duel disk from the bag they'd kept nearby that held their decks and other important things and activated the card with little fanfare.

Next thing he knew he was stumbling backwards, an extra weight pulling at his back very suddenly - luckily Judai had an extremely fast reaction time and was able to grab his hand to sharply tug him back up, keeping a strong grip on him to make sure he didn't fall back again.

"...Well, it definitely worked!" Judai chirped with a toothy grin after a few moments of startled silence, both of them breaking out into laughter now that they were in the clear, "And they even look enough like angel wings to pass, too! I can work with this - here, let's move towards the bench so you have something to hold onto while I check them out thoroughly."


	281. Wing Inspection

_**10/8/19**_

"I think we need to start doing that exercise we talked about a while ago," Judai mentioned, amusedly eyeing the way Yusei was still latched onto the bench with one hand, "because your core strength should be _way_ better than this, Yus."

"You try suddenly having tons on weight on your back without realizing it," Yusei defended, turning just enough to give him a pout and a half-glare without moving his wings away, "You're really going to tell me that you didn't have this issue before?"

"I mean yeah, I did, but it wasn't this bad... I think," Judai replied, giving him a shrug and a lopsided grin, "Either way, the weather's cooler now so - exercise in the mornings from now on!"

" _Fine_ ," Yusei sighed, giving him even more of a little glare before relenting with a small smile and rolled eyes, "Anyway, how do they look?"

"Beautiful," Judai immediately answered, gently reaching out and running a hand along the outside of the closest wing, "Can you feel through them?"

"A little bit, just enough to know that something's touching it I think, " Yusei noted, clearly zoning out a little to focus on the feeling despite looking back at him still, "It's... a nice feeling. Calming, but light."

Judai hummed at the info, walking along the wing after a bit more time to see if it got any more sensitive towards the base of it, "And now?"

"Still the same, mostly, but a little stronger. It's pretty much just easier to notice than anything else," Yusei stated, letting out a small shiver when Judai reached his back and trailed a hand up his back and neck teasingly, "...You just wanted it to be as sensitive as when we're under the potion's effect so you could tease me more, didn't you?"

"Why, I would _never_ do such a thing!" Judai exclaimed, holding his chest dramatically as if he'd been wounded and bursting out laughing when Yusei gave him an incredibly dry stare, "Okay, I would _definitely_ do so. Happy?"

"Yes," Yusei muttered, un-tensing a little bit more thanks to the banter and standing a little straighter as he continued to get used to the weight. He must've been really getting used to the extra appendages because he managed to fold his wings in as much as they could, trapping Judai close to him because he was standing right behind him in-between the two wings and smiling, "Got you."

"Ya got me," Judai agreed, smiling in return before turning to face the wings pressing into him from behind and whistling, "You've got some serious range on these, damn. I didn't know they could bend like that... they don't hurt, do they?"

"No, they're modeled after Stardust's wings since it's technically designed to be an equip card for them - Stardust's wings are pretty interesting and have some odd joints going on with them," Yusei explained, unfolding them to let Judai out as he started to experimentally flap them; he picked up a little wind but stopped before he could do anything else, getting an unsure look on his face that Judai only caught because he'd looked back almost immediately after being released from his capture.

"Well, we can work on this again later," Judai said, patting one of the wings and double-checking to make sure Yusei was watching before leaning in and cheekily pressing a kiss to it, "They've passed inspection, but their owner's failed the physical exam apparently."

"Okay, okay, I get it - just help me figure out a proper work-out schedule later today, then we can start working on it tomorrow morning," Yusei laughed, taking the card off the duel disk and letting out a relieved groan when his wings disappeared into nothing, "Damn, those were heavier than I thought they'd be."

"That's wings for ya," Judai chuckled, moving back behind him now that there was nothing in his way and gently pushing him around to the front of the bench to get him to sit down, "Come on, sit down and turn sideways and I'll massage some of the muscles out. Don't know if you'll be sore later after such a short time having them out, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

It'd been a while since he'd had Yusei melting like putty under his hands and Judai found himself getting a lot more touchy than he'd meant to be, eventually throwing caution to the wind and just covering them with shadows so he could have his fun easier when Yusei accidentally let out a rather indecent sounding noise in response to him hitting a spot on his back just right.


	282. Exercising

_**10/9/19**_

Yusei was really regretting not keeping up a regular work-out routine the next morning, to say the least. He wasn't completely out-of-shape of course, hell he was still in a lot better shape than a lot of people, but compared to Judai?

He had a _long_ way to go to come even close to keeping up with him. Granted, it really wasn't fair at all to compare himself to Judai, who was half-duel monster and had enough stamina to keep himself going for literal days, but he wanted to at least be able to keep up a little bit.

"Come on Yus, you can do it!" Judai called encouragingly, stopping a couple yards ahead of him to wait for him to catch up, "We've almost done two whole laps around, then we'll take a break!"

If he had the breath, Yusei would've snapped back some sort of witty remark, but as it was all he could do was focus on regulating his breathing and attempting to ignore the stitch in his side from jogging around the biggest park in the city, which had about a half-mile circumference - hence, they were running two laps to make it a full mile. He'd been fine for the first lap, but towards the start of the second he started to feel the burn and slowed down significantly, though Judai was quick to notice and help him set a better pace to try and stay at.

Luckily it only took another minute to reach their initial starting point and when he got there, he only barely managed to stay standing because he knew logically that it was better to walk around to cool off after running rather than sit or lie down because it'd help the muscles stretch out, having a far lesser chance of cramping as a result. If it weren't for that though, he'd probably have either flopped down onto the bench nearby or Judai himself (he was short enough for that and it greatly appealed to him as he could imagine how cutely he'd complain about it if he did).

"Five minutes, then we'll do another lap around and call it a morning," Judai said, patting him on the back lightly with a sympathetic but amused grin on his face.

"You're lucky I love you," Yusei muttered in reply, taking deep breaths to try and calm down the adrenaline pounding uncomfortably through his system as he paced around slowly back and forth. Judai leaned against the back of the bench and simply watched him, his grin never fading and only mellowing out a little bit to be more fond than anything else.

"Out of curiosity, how much could you run before?" Judai asked after a while, putting his chin in his hand as he looked up at the sky in thought, "I know you said three miles before, taking your time and all, but now that you've got an actual comparison for it what would you say it was?"

"Still three miles - having to trek back and forth for parts all the time and occasionally having to run from either turf wars or sector security was great for keeping in shape," Yusei answered, finally feeling like he'd caught his breath back and was cooling down enough to have a level head again and stop pacing; he leaned on the bench next to Judai instead, leaning in such a way that his head was low enough to rest it on his shoulder with a relieved sigh.

"Mmm... you're sweaty, y'know that?"

"Deal with it, you're a good pillow."

"I'd have thought it'd be uncomfortable to lean on me when you're like that 'cause of how warm I am to you."

"Having a headrest beats out any downsides to this, Judai."

Judai laughed at that one, wrapping an arm around him to pull him closer and leaning down to press a short kiss to his forehead, "Well, either way don't get too comfy, we're going again in about another minute or so."

Yusei'd take what he could get though, so he tiredly wrapped his arms around him to hopefully soak up some of that positive, not-tired energy Judai had for himself. Before he could really start to settle in though, Judai nudged him up and off the bench with another quiet chuckle, starting to set the pace again with Yusei following right behind as he felt the stitch in his side start to fade back into existence.

 _If I have to go through this every morning I'm going to get something else out of it too_ , Yusei thought dryly to himself in between focusing on his breathing and making sure Judai was still in front of him at a close distance and not super far ahead of him. The question was, what should he do about it?

...Fuck it, he was going to need to shower after this and so was Judai, so he might as well drag him with him. It might backfire occasionally of course and end up making him even more tired, but at least for today he was going to pull as many tricks in the book as possible to make sure it ended with him being victorious.

The thought was good enough to get him through the rest of the lap and all the way back home, at least.


	283. Cold Nights

_**10/10/19**_

"It's pretty cold tonight, huh?" Judai chuckled, curling up closer to Yusei as they settled in for the night. He'd made good progress on the costumes over the last few days, and he should be good to go by the time the tournament came around - it was in a bout a week or so, and they were planning on just using the same strategies as last time so there wasn't much for them to do in that regard. They had plenty of plans that they hadn't used last time, plus some of the best and most fun plans were the ones that they made up on the spot, so they were doubly set to go and win.

He'd gotten Yusei's help for a little bit of the costume making, mainly because Yusei was used to wearing gloves and could deftly pin fabric together without any risk of stabbing himself with a needle; Judai could do it himself, but this let them do something together, sped up the process, and prevented him from having a hole poked in his finger for a few hours before it healed completely, so it was a win-win situation.

It had certainly led to one interesting conversation though. Judai had joked about giving Yusei an angel halo that glowed and even making sure it looked like it was floating, and then of course, Yusei being the precious gearhead that he is, replied that it was very possible with just a little bit of tinkering and applied momentum technology. This then led to a bit more talk about said technology and Judai subsequently learning that casual momentum tech was _illegal_ in many cases, which Yusei had quite the bit of a rant about for once and led to the revelation that making said tech was how he'd gotten so many IOU's from prominent figureheads.

Judai spent quite a bit of time teasing him about managing to find the least incriminating thing possible to get such a valuable thing, because he literally was just making things like light-up stars for baby ceilings and toys that could do cool things and weren't harmful in the slightest.

"It is - now get closer, living heater," Yusei replied with a smile, tugging him as close as he could as Judai did his best to snuggle into his chest and tangle their legs together. They both were wearing their matching hoodies so they were pretty quick to warm each other up, laughing quietly when they both had the idea at the same time to slip their hands under each other's shirts to soak up the warmth easier.

"You're lucky my hands are cold, I'd be having _so_ much fun right now," Judai teased, poking lightly at his side to drive his point home, "I guess I can settle for this fun instead, though."

Yusei rolled his eyes, though he couldn't suppress the little shiver Judai felt him give as he thought about what he'd said, "The day your hands are naturally cold without any external forces acting on them is a day I fear."

"Great, now I _really_ wanna go dip my hands under the sink and then poke you all over."

"How about you don't do that and just stay right here, all nice and warm."

Judai hummed, flashing him a cheeky grin as he got an idea and pulled back a little and unwrapped his arms from around his waist for a moment before poking for a bit at his sleeves to make sure they'd fit and winding his hands up Yusei's sleeves, "There we go, now I'm really warm!"

"...I'm getting flashbacks to when I made the mistake of wearing my lab coat around you," Yusei stated, slowly relaxing in his grip as Judai made sure to avoid accidentally tickling him - it really was warmer like this, he hadn't been lying about that. It was also a little more uncomfortable and his arms would probably fall asleep soon due to the pressure on them, though, so he'd enjoy it before he was forced to pull away.

"Don't worry, I won't do that. I just wanted to have a little fun, that's all," Judai assured, placing a little kiss on his chin and cheek as he sighed in contentment, "You can try it with me if you want, too."

"Maybe later," Yusei mumbled, leaning down to capture his lips softly for a few moments before a mischievous smile crossed his face, "I'm happy with this, though. I've got your hands trapped and you can't do anything about it."

Judai attempted to pull his hands back at that, of course, but he was easily thwarted by a quick bend of Yusei's arms; he couldn't do anything but laugh happily as he was bombarded in relentless eskimo kisses and the occasional longer kiss, though he figured out eventually just how evil Yusei's actual plan was... he was brushing up against his body just right with his legs and at all the right times, never letting the long kisses get too deep, and Judai found himself completely helpless and addicted to the teasing.


	284. Breakfast News

_**10/11/19**_

A ping from both of their phones interrupted the conversation they were having over breakfast, which was actually the sweet corn pancakes Judai had promised to make for Yusei before - he'd finally made the quick trip back to the grocery store to get all the supplies he needed for it during one of their stops to the craft store to get the stuff he needed for the costumes, so he was able to make good on that promise. Yusei seemed to like it quite a bit, managing to keep up with Judai's speed of eating that morning instead of lagging behind like usual, though they did also have a bowl of cut-up fruits between them to share which slowed them down in the end... it was a heavy meal and having the lighter tastes was extremely helpful in ensuring they could even eat the whole meal in the first place.

Judai ended up being the one to check his phone since Yusei was in the middle of carefully scooping up another spoonful of pancake and ice cream, and he let out a little hum of interest when he saw it.

"DDO's maintenance just finished, there's apparently an entirely new event area to go with the update," Judai said, scrolling down the email to check out the patch notes, "Ah... the Halloween event is in full motion now, then. The event area is basically a spooky Halloween area with special quests and rewards, and the plan is to just update the event area to look different whenever they switch events so it's a central hub and easier for people to keep track of."

"Useful," Yusei stated, swallowing down the food with a tiny smile, "We'll go check it out then."

"After breakfast?"

"We're not doing anything else today, why not?"

They had all day to play, so they took their time finishing their food and enjoying the peaceful morning. Pharaoh ended up coming over and begging for food, successfully swindling a piece of fruit from Yusei with a bit of cute pawing and relentless staring.

"Am I the only one with any resistance to him around here?" Judai snorted, sticking his tongue out at the cat when he gave him an affronted look, "Hey, you don't get to give me that look when you're the one that goes out and manages to get food from literally everyone in the vicinity. It's true."

Yusei reached down and picked up Pharaoh, the cat surprisingly willing to go along with as he was settle in his lap and had his front paws brought up and squished while Yusei turned the most evil puppy eyes on him, "Look at him, how can you not want to give him a treat?"

Judai's smile twitched as he looked between them, seeing just happy Pharaoh seemed to be despite Yusei squishing his paws, which would've gotten anyone else a scratch the the face, and pointed out with an amused brow, "I can't tell who's unable to resist who right now between you two."

Of course, this was when Crow decided to make his presence known as he yawned and padded down the stairs, though he seemed to wake up almost immediately upon seeing what Yusei was doing with Pharaoh, "G'morni- Oh my god that's adorable. Let me do that too."

Judai wasn't surprised at all to see Pharaoh easily allow Crow to squish his paws as well when he rushed over, letting out a little meow but not bothering to move from his position in Yusei's lap in the slightest. He knew they were Pharaoh's two main sources of premium treats from the cabinet, which basically secured their place as some of the cat's favorite people.

"Well, whenever you're done with playing with his paws, there's more pancakes. Just make sure you put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top after you re-heat it," Judai stated, going back to eating the last few bites of his food, "And Yusei already gave Pharaoh fruit, so think about if you actually want to feed him or not."

"Ah... Okay, thank you," Crow replied sheepishly, letting go of Pharaoh's paws (only after a few squishes) and scooping out breakfast for himself, "Oh, also, Jack should be down soon. I could hear him talkin' to Carly when I woke up, though I have no clue what about."

"I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up writing about the new event in DDO," Yusei mused, eating the rest of his food as well since Pharaoh had been quick to jump off his lap and follow after Crow in hopes of getting more food, "She'll probably be on when we are then."

"It'd definitely make for a good article, judging just from the pictures they included with the patch notes," Judai agreed, pushing his now-empty plate away with a very content sigh, "Ah... that was good food. I should try some other stuff like that, but... I also wanna make like, pumpkin pie and candy."

"Doesn't matter, it's good food," Yusei said, Crow sitting down at the table with them with a spoon stuffed in his mouth already and nodding his head in agreement.

"Pretty much - now what's this about-"

"Chew with your mouth closed," both Judai and Yusei echoed at the same time, giving each other a look of surprise before bursting out into laughter while Crow gave them the most exasperated look in the world.

"Old married couple, I swear..." Crow mumbled amusedly, stuffing another spoonful into his mouth soon after.

"Thanks for the compliment," Judai grinned, noticing the happy smile that'd stretched itself across Yusei's face - being that close to each other and having that bond... it meant the world to them and they wouldn't have it any other way.


	285. Photo-shoot

_**10/12/19**_

"Hey! Guys, over here!" Carly called them over, waving as she came through the portal entrance to the event area - she had roughly the same reaction that they'd had as well, practically tripping over her feet when she saw the darkened, Halloween-laden environment. It was very different compared to any other place in the game, even with the existence of caverns since caverns were designed with dueling and the story in mind, and Judai was itching to just run around and explore it.

"Hey Carly, what's up?" Judai greeted with a wave, walking towards her with Yusei in tow. Even if it'd been a while since they'd last played the game, they had immediately defaulted back into holding each other's hand going anywhere and everywhere, mainly to make sure all the couple ring effects could be used. It was fun for Judai to show off all the unique items and effects they had and they both enjoyed essentially showing each other off as if to say 'this one is mine'.

"This place is so cool, isn't it?! I'm gonna get a ton of pictures for this article, maybe put a little gallery section in it to keep people interested," Carly replied, still gazing around with wonder before snapping her attention back to them, "Oh, hope I didn't keep you guys waiting too long, by the way."

"You're fine," Yusei smiled, "It was only five minutes and there's lots to just look at around here in general." Plus... we had to move the time back anyway because of the cat fiasco this morning."

Said cat fiasco resulted from Jack joining them for breakfast right when they were about to leave and go play, then proceeding to actively try to provoke a reaction out of Pharaoh through teasing him with food. Needless to say, Pharaoh walked out of the end of that encounter alive and happy while Jack arguably did not.

"What he said," Judai agreed, nodding along with his own grin before asking, "So, you said you needed us for something?"

"Yes, okay - so basically I have the ability to create temporary dummy items in my inventory of any item thanks to being a reporter character model, and I wanted to get a few pictures of you guys wearing the new event rewards to put in the article," Carly explained, pushing her glasses up with a single finger (Judai was sure that those glasses weren't an in-game item of any sort, so he had to give her props for managing to convince someone, somewhere to code it in for her), "You don't have to obviously, but I just really wanted something easy to slap onto the front page."

"I don't mind, do you Yusei?" Judai answered, looking over at Yusei and getting a shake of the head in agreement.

"I don't mind, just give us what we need and tell us what to do, " Yusei said, pulling Judai lightly with him as he gestured towards a side bench and started walking over to it, "Let's sit, at least - don't want to be in the middle of the road."

He and Yusei sat and sorted out their quest logs and inventory while waiting for Carly to make everything she needed, making their interfaces look even more smooth and different thanks to some new options being added to the options menu. Soon enough though she was ready and sent them both trade requests containing the ten-minute temporary cosmetics, which they equipped quickly before standing up and looking over each other.

"This is pretty cool, not gonna lie," Judai whistled, looking at the new items on the both of them before laughing, "Still, wasn't expecting this of all things. A suit?"

"Yours basically looks like the bad-boy casual wear kind of suit, though in Halloween style," Carly snickered, pointing at him before turning to Yusei, "And yours is like if your regular outfit was adjusted to look like a vampire."

"At least it seems to work well," Yusei mused, looking between both himself and Judai before saying, "Alright, tell us how you want us."

She took pictures of them in a couple poses, making sure that they were at angles were their held hands were visible and that the auras that popped up as a result weren't too bright and preventing their outfits from being seen. Luckily she was satisfied with what she'd gotten before the items expired and their previous items were automatically re-equipped, though she did take another picture of them in their regular outfits for good measure.

"I'll share these with you guys," Carly stated, swiping through her screens and organizing at an impressive speed, "Thanks for help! If you need anything from me, just feel free to ask. I know which items come from which quest line, so if there's a specific one you want just tell me and I'll tell you what to do. There's _tons_ of event quests around here and half of them are just for completion's sake."

"Hmm... do you know if there's any aura rewards?" Judai asked first, glancing down at their ribbon laced hands and all the hearts and stars surrounding them and joking, "We ought to get as many as we can and see if eventually people can't see us past the effects anymore."

"Ooh, I think I saw something like that, give me bit," Carly grinned, accepting the task easily and getting to work finding it, "I've gotta read through the descriptions, so I'll just message you the info. You guys have fun doing whatever it is you plan on doing, okay?"

"Alright, thanks!" Judai replied, sending her a mini salute in farewell while Yusei simply waved goodbye with a smile, "See you later Carly!"

Now, the time for exploring the spooky area had come! Judai was absolutely sure there were some hidden places just waiting to be discovered, and that alongside obtaining cosmetics was his main goal here - well, that and just having fun with Yusei. He wasn't entirely sure if there would be any scares along the way, but he supposed that even if there was, it'd be okay since they had each other to latch onto if needed.


	286. Creepy Crawly Quests

_**10/13/19**_

The town was a bit smaller than they'd expected to be, but that was only in how wide it was - it made up for its small diameter by having stacked stairways and buildings, decorated everywhere in the Halloween spirit, with the occasional waterway here and there to split up certain sections of the town while a sparkling fountain stood proudly in the center. It had a Pumpking, the King of Ghosts statue as the middle statue of it, which matched with the feel of the overall atmosphere thanks to all the lights that'd been threaded throughout the buildings. It was permanently night outside in this area, so there had to be lights everywhere in order to see anything, and part of that was fulfilled using jack-o-lanterns whose cutout, instead of the traditional scary face for pumpkins, was that of various duel monsters.

They'd started on the quests once they got their fill, figuring that there was little enough at the start to be able to do (plus not all of the quests required dueling), so they went about doing all the little activities - collecting candy, asking NPCs about if they'd seen anything strange, grabbing a pumpkin from the fields close to town for a kid - until Judai finally got a message from Carly, detailing everything they needed to do to unlock the new aura that'd been released.

"She didn't tell me what the aura was, at least," Judai smiled, sitting on a lit-up bench with him off on a side road in town while searching up all the quest NPC locations on his map, "It should be a fun surprise. I'm glad she gave us everything else though, because we definitely wouldn't have had the time to go through all those other quests... rather, you wouldn't have had the time, at least."

"Please don't remind me," Yusei muttered, sighing at the thought that his classes were actually set to start in only a few days. He only had a precious few days left until he was back on a different kind of work grind and he didn't want to think about it if he didn't have to, "Oh, found him. That's the NPC, right?"

"Yup, that's him," Judai chirped, giving him a sympathetic side hug before he went back to his open notes window, "Coordinates... one-hundred one, and... yup, got it!"

"Let's get started, then," Yusei said, standing up and offering a hand to Judai, who grinned toothily at the gesture and took his hand to stand up.

"Thanks, love," Judai hummed, threading their fingers together while the hearts sprouted up around them, "What do you think the new aura will be?"

"No idea," Yusei admitted, glancing over at him with a smile, "That's part of the fun, though, isn't it?"

"True, I did just say something similar," Judai agreed, falling silent for a few seconds as he looked away at something before turning back to meet his look with a thoughtful frown, "Hey, Yusei..."

Yusei tilted his head in question, humming curiously as Judai seemed to scoot a bit closer before continuing much quieter than before, "Well... I just realized, one of the quests might have quite a bit to do with spiders based off the title of it. Are you gonna be okay or...?"

 _He's right_ , Yusei realized, eyes widening ever-so-slightly at the revelation as he went back over what info they'd been given - there was one quest called _'Cull the Creepy Crawler Cave_ ', which he had kind-of glossed over before due purely to the generic-ness of the name. It wouldn't just be spiders in that case, since 'creepy crawlers' implied a whole slew of bugs that belonged in a fire, in his opinion.

"...Well, I guess that should've been expected with all the Halloween decorations," Yusei stated, thinking a little more on it before concluding, "I should be okay though. As long as I keep in mind that nothing here is actually _real_ , I should be able to deal with it just fine. Besides, I've had to duel against people with spider-like duel monsters in their deck, and while it was definitely unnerving, I didn't have too much trouble with it around."

"Alright, that's good," Judai breathed, looking up at him with a reassuring smile that made him relax a little more from suddenly being confronted with that horrible reality, "But if it does get to be too much, just tell me, okay?"

"I will, don't worry," Yusei replied, a more mischievous smile taking over as he spotted the first of the trio of quests they needed to take to get started, "Now, let's get started, shall we? The first set all deals with the haunted forest outside town and I'm curious to see what they did with the place."

"Thank the gods for this map," Judai laughed, looking over the quests they'd accepted that were all marked on it, "Because this would've taken _way_ too long otherwise, even knowing what we do. It looks like the forest is pretty much a maze and there's some blanked out sections in it."

"Spooky forest maze, huh?" Yusei asked, thinking of the careful observations he'd been making about Judai as they'd wandered through town and looked at everything before saying as innocently as possible, "I bet there'll be ghosts."

"A-Ah, yeah, maybe," Judai chuckled, though he wasn't able to hide the nervous stutter from him fast enough; Yusei felt a trill of satisfaction at guessing what he was most scared of correctly and he fully planned on sneaking in a well-placed 'Boo!' at some point. It'd probably earn him a pout and a scare himself later on when Judai figured out how to get back at him without the use of insects, but it was well worth the cute reaction he knew he'd get.


	287. Spider Cave

_**10/14/19**_

On one hand, the goal of the spider quest ended up simply being a quest to place an item (a magical bomb, in this case) in the back of a cave - no boss monster, no duels, nothing seemingly in the way.

On the other hand, the cave walls were literally swarming with spiders.

"Well... if I didn't understand the quest name before, I definitely do now," Judai sighed, glancing over at Yusei worriedly, "Are you... actually gonna be okay? Because even I'm a little squicked out right now."

"Who says 'squicked'...?" Yusei snorted quietly, though the slight wince never disappeared from face as he simply stared at the sight in front of them, "I think I can do it? It's... not real."

"It's not real," Judai reassured him, biting his lip as he looked back at the cave again in thought - luckily he could do that here and not get berated for it because he wasn't _actually_ biting his lip, "Well, I guess we just try. It's not a very big cave based off the map, so it shouldn't take long to get to the back."

"Y-Yeah," Yusei agreed hesitantly, frown smoothing out ever-so-slightly as he finally managed to tear his eyes away to look at Judai instead, "It won't take long at all."

"That's right."

"And we get to blow it up afterwards and set all the spiders on fire."

"Exactly."

Even with the little bit of encouragement and reassurance, they still were both standing in the same exact place a minute later. Judai didn't want to start moving until Yusei did, but he was starting to think that he may just have to take the lead in the end or they'd never get anywhere.

Before he could start to say anything though, Yusei spoke up again, asking, "Could you just ah... well, you remember what you did way back when, when we first went to the reactor?"

It took him a couple moments to try and figure out what he was trying to say, but then Judai remembered how he'd held him really close to him in order to make sure his energy spread out over both of them (and admittedly in part to just hold him close, he wasn't going to deny that part at all). It wasn't going to work quite as well considering the heat element wasn't quite there - the 'warmth' emitted from player characters wasn't very accurate so it was more just having that knowing feeling that you were in contact with someone, so it wouldn't be as comforting a gesture, but he could think of another way to make it work.

"I remember, but I've got a better idea now that you mention it," Judai replied, pulling him closer so he could let go of his hand in favor of wrapping Yusei's arms around his shoulders so he was getting hugged from behind, looking up and back at him with a smile, "Walk with me, it should be easier than it actually would be if we were doing this in real life thanks to how the collision is. Just bury your head down, okay?"

"I- okay," Yusei blinked, looking a little surprised but taking the opportunity anyway to dig his face down into the crook of his neck. If it'd been real life, Judai would've probably been too flustered to focus on walking because it was just the right spot where he was ticklish while being warm and distracting, but thankfully it was VR so he didn't have that issue at all.

"...I'm ready."

"Alright, let's go!"

Two steps into the cave and Judai was extremely glad he wasn't that squeamish when it came to these things because he could imagine just how awful it would be to try and walk through the cave while it seemed like the walls were moving in waves - that's how many spiders there were crawling around, and he thanked the gods above that they were apparently _only_ on the walls and that none were going onto the ceiling or ground at all. It made it significantly easier to keep distracting Yusei with some small talk about what to make for dinner that night and how the costumes were pretty much ready to go for the tournament because he didn't have to worry about any of them dropping onto them from above; Yusei just kept his head down and eyes closed the whole time, matching his steps so perfectly that Judai knew he had to have been putting all his focus into him and his walking so he didn't think about their surroundings.

It only took three full minutes of walking and turns to finally reach the end, where it was pretty clear they were supposed to set up the magic bomb in section of the wall that was completely free of spiders. Judai ended up just guiding Yusei's hand where it needed to go to complete this part of the quest since he didn't want to risk anything when they still had to make their way back out of the cave, then he did the exact same thing as before to distract him as they walked outside again.

"We're out, by the way," Judai hummed, stopping a substantial distance away from the cave, "It's safe to look Yus." He felt arms unwrap from around him and heard Yusei do a bit of a head shake before turning around to flash him a grin, saying, "That wasn't too bad after all, huh?"

The severely unimpressed look Yusei gave him was too good not to let out a small laugh at, and though he tried to apologize afterwards they both simply ended up laughing together, mostly out of relief that the stupid quest was nearly over.

"Alright, you get to be the one to do the honors," Judai stated, gesturing towards the cave and letting out a little 'poof' sound, "I'm ready to see this cave go boom."

"I was born ready for this," Yusei said with a serious nod (though Judai could tell he was barely managing to hold the look), pulling the detonator out of his inventory as vengeance flashed across his eyes.

"Fuck spiders."

The explosion was full of color and got low, impressed whistles from the both of them, pulling a loud cheer out of them especially when a second explosion somehow went off too.

If seeing that felt that cathartic for Judai, he could only imagine just how Yusei was feeling at that moment.

...Didn't change the fact that they were both going to send in request tickets for the option to have alternate quest lines for things dealing with common phobias.


	288. Feeling Batty

_**10/15/19**_

The Halloween aura item ended up being a bat trail, where a bunch of clean little bat symbols would trail out behind them while they walked - they were animated in such a way that it looked more like the way a bat would move than just random particle movements, so it was pretty cool overall. It didn't interfere much with the rest of their equips because it only activated when they walked, plus even though it had a glow effect, it still was pretty light.

"Well, we got the cool aura, so I'd say it's time to log-off and get some food," Judai decided, stopping from how he was pulling Yusei in circles just so he could look at the bats come out from behind them - it was a little addicting to watch for some reason and he kind-of wished it had an idle animation as well.

With everything they did in order to get it, you'd think that it would have one... then again, they'd managed to clear the quests to get it in the span of four hours more-or-less, so he supposed it wasn't really too 'rare' of an item besides being an event-only one; compared to their starry aura rings and their main outfits, which were a result of a very long chain quest and quite a bit of time dueling in the arena, it was really short and easy pickings.

"I agree... and the best part of this is still getting to blow up the cave," Yusei firmly stated - he'd been in quite the happy mood ever since then, so it didn't surprise Judai in the slightest. He couldn't help but agree though, because honestly that was a literal nightmare cave from hell and he'd seen quite a range of messed-up shit in his life.

Once their headsets were both off, they both shook their hair out at the same time, making them look at each and chuckle at the other's hair.

"It doesn't even cover the whole head, why does it look like we have helmet hair?" Judai asked, laughing as he reached up and did his best to flatten some of Yusei's mussed-up spikes, "Hell, your hair doesn't look this messy even after you take off your actual helmet."

"The world may never know," Yusei mused, grabbing his hands and pulling them down with an amused smile on his face, "I feel like you're just messing it up more, though."

"I would _never_ do such a thing," Judai grinned, scooting forward and freeing his hands so he could fall forward into a hug with him instead. Yusei was warm since they'd covered themselves with a light blanket to get comfortable before they logged-in to play and he was just so nice to hold...

Yusei wrapped his arms around him with a disbelieving hum to his statement, though no more words were exchanged between them for a while as they just enjoyed the moment, feeling perfectly comfortable and content with life. The sun shone lightly through the window curtains, and the windows themselves were left slightly open to let in fresh air, which meant that the sound of the city filtered in just ever-so-slightly louder than usual.

It was relaxing enough that Judai swore he was starting to doze off, actually, and while he'd normally be happy to do just that, especially like this, his stomach was also begging for food because it was late lunch time and they hadn't eaten since breakfast.

"Let's go eat," Judai said, voice muffled since he couldn't find the strength to lift his head up from Yusei's shoulder. He could practically feel the raised eyebrows Yusei was surely giving him as he felt the other's head shift down to look towards him,

"...I can't get up unless you get up first, y'know," Yusei muttered after a minute, sounding very entertained from the tone of it. He retaliated by simply squeezing his arms around him tighter, which earned him a small huff of amusement and a tighter hug as well.

"Food time."

"...Judai."

"I'm hungry... so hungry... but you're so hug-able..."

"Alright, you asked for it."

Suddenly hands were under his shirt and brushing right at the right spots on his sides to tickle him, causing Judai to pull back almost immediately and attempt to swat the offending hands away, squeaking out, "Yusei-! Okay okay, I'm up!"

"That's what I thought," Yusei grinned, quickly stopping and getting up before Judai could even think about latching back onto him, "Come on, we'll get food and if you're still in the mood for a nap we can take one."

"Okay," Judai quietly agreed, smiling back at him before realizing as they walked down the stairs, "Hey wait, how'd you know I wanted a nap?"

"You wouldn't be that conflicted about getting up for food unless it was either for work or if you didn't want to move," Yusei explained with a snort, making him pout at how true it was.

Later though, as Judai stood scooping out leftovers into bowls to re-heat in the microwave, Yusei promptly hugged him from behind and sagged his weight on him, which Judai was quick to use to his advantage and tease him about clearly just wanting to nap as well. At least he didn't try to deny it all, even if he made the process of getting their food ready take twice as long.


	289. Class Time

_**10/16/19**_

Yusei hadn't even left yet, but the dread for the coming day was already multiplying as he made sure for the nth time that he'd put everything he needed in his bag. It was all there of course, but doing so dragged his mind away from the issue for a few precious seconds that he'd gladly latch onto.

"I know school sucks, but I think you'll feel a lot better about it after the first day," Judai sighed, nudging him lightly on his side with a smile, "Besides, I'm pretty sure the actual classes will be the least stressful part of it - dealing with people is the hard part, especially with uh... you being the current champion and all."

"The weekend cannot come fast enough," Yusei muttered, twitching a little at the reminder. He wouldn't get the luxury that was Judai's ability to obscure them from being seen since he'd be on his own and when combined with where he was going, was a recipe for disaster. Hopefully he'd be able to just make a straight shot for his classes and/or the students there had better things to do than fan over him.

"Well, I agree with that one - the tournament should be fun," Judai chuckled, nudging at him again to get him to stop fiddling with his bag, "Come on though, breakfast's ready and I made chocolate pancakes just for you."

"Ah... you made my favorite? Thanks," Yusei replied with a smile, letting out a laugh of his own as he made his way to the kitchen and slowly started to eat; Judai sat down next to him with his own hidden plate, though he started eating a little faster than him and ultimately finished while he was still only halfway done. Judai went on to go work on something else, though what it was was a mystery to Yusei since he was actively trying to hide what it was from him - all he knew was that it was probably food related since it was all being worked on in the kitchen.

"So my last class ends at six-thirty," Yusei explained, happily smearing some of the melted chocolate chips across the top of another section of his pancakes before going on to tear off the section with a fork. He really loved chocolate, and Judai's chocolate pancakes in particular were fluffy without being too sweet from being served with so much chocolate; his day was starting to look up a bit just because of the food, to be honest, and he found himself finally able to relax a little bit to talk.

"Late dinner on class days then?" Judai mused, pausing to look over his shoulder at him and blinking, "I don't mind waiting, so don't worry about it. I'd rather have you around to eat with than start a little early without you."

"Alright, thanks - if you do ever get super hungry though, don't worry about waiting please," Yusei said, pointing a forkful of pancake at him with a small grin, "Got it?"

"Yeah yeah, I got it," Judai reassured, returning the grin before going back to the thing he was doing beforehand. Yusei cleaned off the rest of his plate at a relaxed pace, savoring the chocolate on his tongue in between bites until there wasn't anymore to be eaten.

"Guessin' it was good?" Judai asked cheekily, noticing that he'd finished and leaned back in his chair for a bit to reset himself.

Yusei opened his eyes and gave him an exasperated look, replying, "Of course it was, though it wasn't just good, it was _great_." They shared a laugh before Yusei got up and decided to help out a little bit by washing the dishes, being careful not to look over at what Judai was doing - if he wanted it to be a surprise, then he'd let him have his fun and not spoil it for himself. He did have a quick glance over at him though purely so he could stick his tongue out at him a little since he kept adding dishes to the sink to be washed.

"Sorry, thanks for the help though dear," Judai laughed, leaning up to give him a quick kiss in appreciation before waving him off again, "Now, shoo! No looking yet!"

By the time Yusei finished, Judai was done as well and he found himself being pulled into a hug once he dried his hands off. He let out a little hum of question that was answered by Judai simply smiling and leaning up to steal another kiss, which he gladly gave away and even made a little longer by not letting him pull away the first time.

"You kinda forgot something, ya gear-head," Judai teased, holding his hands for a moment just so he could squeeze them before grabbing a bag that Yusei hadn't noticed before off the kitchen counter, "You need a lunch."

"...I may have forgotten, yes," Yusei admitted sheepishly, eternally grateful that Judai was there to look out for him - he'd been so focused on everything else that he'd completely forgotten he'd need to eat in-between classes at some point or he'd probably burn out super early, "Thanks, cute Kuriboh." He gently put the lunch bag back on the counter so he could steal some more kisses to show his thanks, peppering eskimo kisses all over Judai's face and enjoying the laughter it pulled out of him.

"Try to have fun, okay?" Judai eventually said, once they'd had to stop because Yusei needed to leave, "I love you."

"I'll do my best, love you too," Yusei replied quietly, feeling significantly better about how the day was going to go now that he'd gotten a significant dosage of his boyfriend to carry with him.

It ended up not being very bad after all, especially when he found a quiet place to eat by himself and found a cute little love note in his lunch bag; he didn't know when Judai found the time to write it, but it definitely succeeded at putting a smile on his face and restoring any good mood that he'd lost throughout the day so far.


	290. No Interview!

_**10/17/19**_

The day of the tournament had finally arrived and Yusei was happy about it for multiple reasons, though one very clear one stood out above the rest of them - it meant that the school week was _over_ for now and his time for a break had finally come. His classes were simple, don't get him wrong, and they didn't require too much effort on his part because he knew most of the concepts already so far, but the workload had jumped an incredible amount over just a week of class and he was left in wondrous horror at just how much there was; all the classes had online pages through the school system, where most of them listed all the assignments that would be due over the quarter, and damn were there a lot of them.

If this was how classes were in college, and Judai was adamant that high school was significantly worse than college both stress-wise and work-wise, then he was really counting his blessings that he never had to experience the public school system. He had a new respect for the twins not coming to him for more help than they did, at least, and he'd already messaged Aki to commiserate with her. They both had heavy workloads, but Aki's were significantly greater purely due to the fact that she was learning entirely new information about everything as opposed to Yusei, who was pretty much breezing through classes and just there for the ride.

On the bright-side, his classmates were all tired Physics and Engineering majors, most of whom were way to busy with coursework and projects to think of anything but school, food, and occasional sleep, so no one gave him any hassle other than one he didn't mind - they'd ask him about some theory or another that they didn't quite understand and he'd had fun explaining it to them and ultimately nerding out over technology. It was an intellectual stimulation that he didn't get much with his coworkers, to be honest, since everyone was (rightly) more focused on fixing the problems and reaching their end goal for their project than exploring theory and research. Even when he got to work on research, which only happened when there weren't any projects he was needed on and that was few times far between, it was always on his own and never with a team that he could really explore the issue with and use as soundboards.

His poor section of the research lab was probably building up dust as it sat unused. Maybe he should do some more while he's essentially on leave...

For now though, there was a tournament to duel in. They were all dressed up in the costumes Judai had made for them, though they did end up using fake attachable wings in the end because there was no way Yusei was going to be able to use his wings yet, even idly, and Judai didn't want to do it without him for some reason, but they were still nice looking and fit in with the rest of the outfit well.

"It's a shame we couldn't do the wings, but we'll probably be able to do it on Halloween at least," Judai said as they finally reached their waiting room for the tournament after signing in, being told that their first match would be a couple duels into the tournament so they had time to waste. There were around a hundred tag-duel teams who'd entered and been accepted, so there'd be roughly three to four duels at a time in the interest of keeping the tournament lasting only a day - it worked to go well into the night for once because of the theme of it being Halloween, so there wasn't much worry about that.

"You still gotta teach me how to use them, don't forget," Yusei reminded him, seeing him lock the door before pulling him down carefully onto the couch inside while minding their costumes and hugging him with a happy sigh.

"How could I forget?" Judai grinned, leaning his head back to look up at him and hugging his arms, "Hey there, handsome."

"Hey yourself, handsome," Yusei replied with a quiet chuckle. He wasted no time in getting as comfortable as possible, Judai turning around to face him while he adjusted their weights better, before kissing him softly and letting out another sigh, "I am _so_ glad I have no classes today."

Judai laughed at that, sending him a sunny smile that just made his mood skyrocket even more, "Now that's something I fully understand. Classes _suck_ , don't they?"

"They really do, though there are some good points about them," Yusei admitted, letting their foreheads press together as they simply smiled happily at each other and leaned on the back of the couch while holding hands, Judai basically sitting in his lap. Luckily the position meant that they didn't have to worry much about their costumes since there wasn't really much getting pressed on them, especially on the wings.

"The good point being free sleep, right?" Judai joked, smiling unashamedly while Yusei merely rolled his eyes in amusement. Suddenly his eyes widened, gripping his hand tighter for a moment as he stated, "Wait a minute! I just realized something, this is the first tournament where they haven't made us do an interview at the very beginning!"

"What...? Wait, you're right, it _is_ the first one," Yusei realized, his own eyes widening slightly too before he grinned brightly and dragged Judai into a fast and hard kiss out of sheer happiness, "Today is just a great day, that's what it is."

"It is... and Yusei, please just... keep the outfits in mind, okay?" Judai replied, giving him a slightly dazed but knowing look as he processed the kiss, licking his lips subconsciously in a way that only served to bring Yusei's full attention to them.

"I will, don't worry," Yusei promised, dragging him promptly into a much softer kiss that slowly deepened as time went on, tongues only starting to wander and brush against each other when they absolutely couldn't stand not doing so anymore.

At least he did end up keeping his promise, though they both ended up needing to straighten their hair a bit afterwards - when all the usual places for their hands to wander weren't permitted, they of course went straight to hair tugging and pulling; it wasn't something they usually did, but after that particular session they'd probably be doing it more often.


	291. Costume Contest

_**10/18/19**_

The costume contest ended up happening after the first round of duels were over, which meant everyone who was participating in it had had a chance to show-off their costumes. There were some really good pairs out there that Judai had to give credit to where credit was due, especially for the few who clearly did it either as a hobby or professionally - it was seriously impressive and made him want to work on his sewing skills, to say the least.

 _Do you think some of the spirits in town would teach me?_ Judai asked mentally, seriously debating on whether or not he wanted to pursue the interest - it wasn't like he didn't have the time or money for it, but there was just... so much out there to try. Cooking was still something he loved and doing art was a relaxing hobby, but he was worried he'd burn himself out one day trying to juggle all three, especially since cooking had turned into his main source of income and he was bound to come across another thing that caught his interest.

" _They'd probably die from happiness, that's not even a question,_ " Yubel replied, rolling her eyes at him before sending him some reassurance, " _And if you're worried about burning out, then start with just learning the basics beyond what you already know._ "

" _It's an important practical skill_ ," Haou chipped in, surprising him a bit until he realized that Haou would approve of anything he considered practical in some way; knowing basic sewing skills was useful for a lot of things so of course he'd appreciate the hobby.

 _I'll look into it later then,_ Judai decided, smiling when he felt approval from both of them - they were always great at giving advice for these sorts of things, even if their modern knowledge was lacking at times, and he trusted them fully in that regard.

"Who do you think'll win?" Yusei asked, sipping at the iced tea they'd stopped to get after winning their first duel - both of them were thirsty and in the mood for something other than water, and it let them have something to sip at while they watched the rest of the duels and waited to be called up again.

One thing Judai noted though was that the straw was clearly bitten and bent to the point that it was a slit already. He hadn't really noticed before that moment, but apparently Yusei was a straw biter who chewed his straws to bits.

Cute, but at the same time it left him wincing a little internally at the bad habit - he liked his straws to not be flat slits, thank you very much.

"I have no clue, to be honest. There were some really good ones out there," Judai admitted, sipping from his own drink with its very not-bitten straw that he was now hyper-aware of thanks to his thoughts from earlier, "A couple of them even themed their decks to go with their costumes, so those are the ones that'll probably win."

"I hope they do," Yusei sighed, looking away from the TV to smile ruefully at him instead, "It'd be nice to not win a popularity poll type of thing for once. It's bad enough that Crow keeps us updated on all of that stuff."

"We did it because it's fun, not to win," Judai agreed, though he ended up grinning when Crow's antics were brought up, "Also, I get that he does it because he finds our misery hilarious, but if you didn't know any better you'd think he had an obsession with those things."

"No kiddin'," Yusei laughed, smile brightening as he added on, "Or you could even think he wanted to find himself at the top of one of those instead."

"Y'know, I can see him going pro and being one of the ones that do all their duels in costume," Judai mused, the image forming pretty easily in his head, "Black cloak, a crow theme, large feather decorations..."

"There's people that do that?" Yusei wondered, tilting his head a little to the side in question, "I don't watch any of the pro matches except for the ones I have to directly participate in or if you're dueling, so I'm not very familiar with the different types of pros. Plus, there's no costumes other than customized riding outfits for riding duels because it just wouldn't be practical, so..."

"Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, there's pros out there who go out in costume every duel and simply try to make it as entertaining to watch as possible, getting the crowd to cheer mostly for them instead of the other one," Judai explained, happily watching as Yusei only tilted his head more to mull over the information.

"I feel like that could be almost its own kind of duel," Yusei eventually said, giving the idea some more thought before ultimately shrugging and letting it go for now, "Oh well, food for thought I guess."

Right when Judai went to reply, Yusei sipped at his drink again and started chewing at the straw again, which broke the last of his willpower as he instead said, "Yusei, your poor straw..."

"Hm? What do you... oh," Yusei replied, pulling back and finally noticing how flattened it was. He looked up at Judai's, which was very clearly not bitten, before giving him a sheepish little smile, "Hey, it's just nice, okay?"

"You _straw-biter_..."

"D-don't say it like it's an _insult_ , Judai."

They ended up bantering for a bit, teasing each other lightly about little habits they'd noticed about each other that they honestly didn't realize they did, before they finally learned that they'd come in fourth place in the stadium-wide poll for the contest; they both unashamedly rejoiced in the fact that they hadn't won for once before going straight back to messing with each other.


	292. Deck Changes

_**10/19/19**_

They got through the rest of the rounds just fine, until finally it was time for the finals. They had another period of waiting beforehand though, mainly because they were having an intermission and taking the chance to show off the winners of the costume contest again (along with a couple interviews or two about the entire event); they weren't going to complain at all, mainly because _they_ weren't the ones getting interviewed for once and that would never cease to be something to celebrate, so they took the time to finally get some dinner seeing as it was nighttime at this point.

"I knew the place was decorated before, but I didn't know that they had all this set-up," Judai wondered, blinking around in wonder at all the black lights and string lights and those lights that shined pictures on the ground and walls. He hadn't noticed them at all besides from the string lights, but it was a pleasant surprise and made walking around the crowded spaces a lot more fun and interesting on their quest for food.

"Makes me curious to see if the city is going to do anything huge on Halloween," Yusei replied, looking around as well for a moment before setting his attention back on him and making sure their hands continued to hold tight so they didn't get separated, "Maybe at one of the parks? There's the major one in the middle..."

"Have we been to that one?" Judai asked, trying to think of the park. He was pretty sure it was named, so Yusei was probably right that they hadn't gone yet together since he couldn't think of a name for it.

"No, but we've been to a couple around it," Yusei answered, "This one's a little... unconventional because of how it's structured. Basically it's tiered and spread out over a wide area, but traversing the tiers can get difficult if you don't already know what you're doing. It was never conducive to what we wanted to do, so I never brought it up as a place to go."

"That makes sense," Judai said, giving him a relaxed smile as they reached a hallway with less people than the previous ones, "Well, we'll have to pop over there sometime. I imagine one day we'll cover the whole city, top to bottom, just to say we did."

"...I don't think I have the energy for that, Judai," Yusei sighed, though he smiled back despite that, "Let's just stick to multiple trips like we've been doing."

"I know I know, don't worry. I won't make you go running around the entire city in a day," Judai laughed, finally spotting the specific food court they were looking for - luckily there wasn't much of a line right now, so they must've gotten there just in time between rushes of people. Which, honestly, was a really good thing because they were actually on a little bit of a time crunch - they had thirty minutes until they were up and they'd expected to have to rush because of the lines, but now they didn't have to worry.

"Thanks so much for thinking of your poor boyfriend," Yusei drawled, making him laugh at the sarcasm. If there was one thing Judai enjoyed, it was getting Yusei to joke around with him or use sarcasm, because he hardly did it unless he was prompted somehow.

"Anyway, we can look up a city event schedule later. What'd you want to eat?"

"No idea... surprise me again, I'm just hungry."

"Alright, I can do that," Judai agreed easily, not entire sure what he wanted himself. When he still wasn't sure by the time they reached the front of the line, he ended up just ordering the first two things his eyes landed on and a single drink to split since there were free refills and they had a duel to get to right after.

"So... about the duel," Yusei started lowly once they'd sat down with their food at a table that was towards the back of the food court and a little less crowded as a result, "I may have switched out a lot of my side deck for different cards, mainly 'cause I wanted to surprise you."

"What kinds of cards?" Judai asked curiously, definitely surprised by the revelation - Yusei usually didn't use new cards since his deck was tried and true, not unless they were archetypal or just flat out synergized with his deck.

"That's the secret, though" Yusei replied, causing him to pout at him mid-bite with a fry in his mouth, "It wasn't exactly my idea, I'll tell you that much as a hint. But in the next duel, can you do your best to get fusion gate out on the field? Just in case things go awry."

"Yeah, that's not a problem, but now you've got me curious," Judai whined, making sure he swallowed down the fry first before he spoke, "Wasn't your idea, but you're going along with it? Spirits of some sort?"

"You'll understand immediately once I play them," Yusei replied, and Judai had to give him credit where credit was due for managing to not give away anything else about the mystery.

Suddenly the finals couldn't come fast enough.


	293. Queen's Command

_**10/20/19**_

Their finals opponents were one of the teams who'd dressed up and themed their decks accordingly - they both ran Ice Barrier decks and wore costumes that made them look like they were one of their monsters, and they had to give them props for that.

Unfortunately, dueling them was much more of a pain than they'd like because of one specific card...

They had Trishula of the Ice Barrier, and they'd managed to make it hit the field twice already making for a total of twelve banished cards between the two of them. It ended up being in their favor in the end, of course, but it was still a pain to deal with at first because they weren't sure when it'd happened if they'd be able to follow-up very well.

It was Judai's draw, and they were facing down a Trishula, and a nearly full field of Ice Barrier monsters that protected each other a little too well - Cryomancer of the Ice Barrier made it so that no one could attack with any monster level four or high, Defender of the Ice Barrier made it so that even if they did have a lower level monster, it couldn't attack if it had over 1600 attack, and Secret Guards of the Ice Barrier made it so they couldn't target any of their monsters with effect monsters. On the bright-side there was only one face-down that they already knew was Solemn Warning (not Solemn Judgement for once) thanks to them specifically searching for it, and they couldn't activate it even if they wanted to since they only had 1800 life points and needed 2000 to activate it.

"Alright, my turn! Draw!" Judai called, grinning at the card he'd pulled and sharing a look with him that told Yusei he had at least something he could do, "Well, looks like those banished cards are doing some good in the end. I activate Parallel World Fusion! I choose an 'Elemental HERO' Fusion Monster from my Extra Deck whose Material Monsters are banished, then I shuffle those monsters into my deck and Special Summon it to the field. I choose Elemental HERO Grandmerge, with Elemental HERO Neos and Burstinatrix as materials."

 _Ah, so we both can use the banished cards to our advantage_ , Yusei mused, taking a glance at his own hand and smiling inwardly at what a perfect set-up they had - somehow Judai had come through again with the perfect play, even if he didn't know it yet.

"Elemental HERO Grandmerge's attack is equal to the levels of the materials used to summon him times 300, which makes his attack 3000!" Judai continued, relaxing a bit now that they had a monster there was no way they could get over for the moment. They needed to save all the life points they could since they were sitting at only 900 left.

He took another glance down at his hand before seeming to make a decision and deciding to play it, "Finally, I activate the field spell Fusion Gate, which lets anyone Fusion Summon once per turn by banishing the materials from their hand or field. End turn."

Oh good, so Judai _had_ remembered what he'd asked him to do earlier. It meant he could actually make this entire play work in the first place... Yusei could definitely see why he'd been told this particular set of cards would do better in a support deck for Judai and not in Judai's actual deck, but honestly he was just glad it was going to work. Neither of their two opponents had more than a card in their hand, and so long as they got through the next turn unscathed he was golden.

"Draw!" Their opponent shouted, cape fluttering a little thanks to the motion of it, "Ha... you got lucky with that defense, I've got nothing for now. End turn."

"My turn then, I draw!" Yusei stated, glancing at the card he drew for only a moment before putting it to the back of his hand and allowing himself a little smile as he fanned out his cards and got ready to combo; he caught a knowing and intrigued look from Judai before he started, which only made him more excited about being able to pull this off, "To start with, I'll activate the spell card Invocation! This lets me Fusion Summon a Fusion Monster from my Extra Deck using cards in my hand, and if its got 'Invoked' in its name, then I can also banish monsters from my field and from any player's graveyard. I choose 'King of the Swamp' from Judai's graveyard and 'Spellbreaker of the Ice Barrier' from your graveyard to summon Invoked Cocytus!"

"King of the Swamp... wait, what named card are you replacing?" Judai wondered quietly so only he could hear while Cocytus roared and splashed onto the field from the magic seal that'd appeared on the field, "Also, fusion summons?! No wait, Invoked... wait, don't tell me-"

Yusei merely set him a mischievous grin, quickly moving on and happy with the reaction he'd gotten from both Judai and, now that he'd noticed, their opponents and the crowd, "Now, I activate the effect of Invocation in my graveyard! Once per turn, I can target one of my banished 'Aleister the Invoker's, then shuffle this card into my deck and if I do, add Aleister to my hand. Next, I summon Aleister the Invoker to the field in attack position!"

Lucky for him, Aleister had happened to have been the target of one of the two Trishula banish effects, so he was there to respond to the call.

Aleister gracefully appeared on the field, cape swirling around him as he used the hand holding his book to adjust his glasses before turning and giving both of them a slight bow of the head while sporting an excited grin, "My King, my Queen. Pleasure to be of assistance."

Judai was looking between them with a pleasantly surprised, but nonetheless shocked smile that told them they'd all be meeting up again later tonight back in Judai's realm, "Holy shit, you gave him your cards? The whole archetype? Go get 'em, get 'em good! I've never actually seen any of these in action!"

"W-will do, sir," Aleister sheepishly replied, seemingly a bit embarrassed by the attention before focusing again - his entire demeanor seemed to shift at once as a blue aura seemed to start leaking from him as he opened his book and let magic flip the pages, readying his staff for what was coming next, "Shall we, my Queen? Well done, by the way."

"Not a problem," Yusei mumbled back quietly, continuing on seamlessly so the pause wasn't noticeable, "When Aleister the Invoker is Normal Summoned, I can add one 'Invocation' from my deck to my hand. I'll activate it this time to summon 'Invoked Magellanica' from my Extra Deck using 'Aleister the Invoker' and 'Sonic Chick' from my graveyard as materials."

The huge earthen beast slammed down onto the field from the seal, which had appeared right above Aleister this time as he chanted and sent them a slightly wild smirk before disappearing off the field. It was a little unnerving, but then Yusei remembered that this was a spirit who'd lived through wars and for thousands of years and was suddenly introduced to the concept of peace roughly twenty years ago - he wouldn't be surprised if he had simply needed to let off a little blood-lust that he couldn't help but have.

He probably wasn't the only one feeling like that either, in which case he probably needed to talk to Judai about maybe asking around the towns to see if anyone wanted to get used in a duel...

Later, though. For now he had a duel to win.

"Next, I use Fusion Gate's effect to Fusion Summon 'Invoked Elysium' from my Extra Deck, using 'Ivoked Magellanica' and the Special Summoned 'Elemental HERO Grandmerge' as material," he said, extremely glad that Judai had summoned Grandmerge the way he had - Invoked Elysium specifically required an 'Invoked' monster and a monster that was Special Summoned from the Extra Deck, which would normally be difficult to pull off but Judai was great at doing exactly that so he'd been able to summon the Invoked archetype's boss monster.

The huge entity actually was faded at the bottom, since it was apparently far too long to ever fit on a field - miles long, in fact, according to Aleister who'd pretty much gone on a happy rant telling him all about his precious monsters he could summon. Crystal, translucent spikes and a shield covered the solid band around it, and it floated menacingly over the entire field.

Honestly, Yusei still wasn't entirely sure what it was supposed to be even with Aleister's descriptions, but all he really needed to know was that the thing was sentient and had some major, _major_ destruction power.

"Invoked Elysium counts as all attributes while face-up on the field," Yusei explained, being the first to stop looking up at the monster in awe, "Once per turn, I can target one 'Invoked' monster I control or is in my graveyard, then banish it and all monsters my opponent controls with the same attribute as that monster... I think you can guess which monster I'm choosing."

"Cocytus... which is a water attribute," one of their opponents realized in horror, "And all our monsters are water attributes."

"Precisely," Yusei grinned, activating the effect and simply watching as Elysium did... what looked like a scan of some sort on Cocytus, making them disappear before suddenly the shield closed entirely around their opponents' field and quite literally obliterated their monsters to pixelated smithereens.

Judai let out a low whistle at the destruction, stating, "It's one thing to see it in memories, it's another thing to see it actually in front of me. _Damn._ "

Yusei very much agreed, ending the duel with a final command, "It's been fun, but it's time to end this duel - Invoked Elysium, attack them directly!"

He was very glad Aleister was on their side as he watched Elysium fire a huge beam down at their opponents, and also extremely glad that all of this was ultimately holograms and not real despite the name 'solid vision'.


	294. Paying A Visit

_**10/21/19**_

After the awards ceremony, which thankfully didn't take very long, they hightailed it out of the place so they could get home and change out of their costumes - they may be fun to wear, but after a full day of it they were ready to change into some actual clothes. Plus, they couldn't just change into pajamas yet since they had somewhere else to go; Judai opened a portal to his realm once they were all freshened up and ready to go, and they took a nice quiet stroll from the drop-off point to the town.

It was dark outside, mainly because the time there seemed to coincide pretty accurately with their world (something that Yusei had speculated was because of Judai's connection to it, which he had to agree with as pretty sound reasoning), and the night air was crisp compared to the cities, which made the walk even more relaxing after a long day of dueling. Neither of them said much, simply enjoying the quiet atmosphere, holding hands as they strolled at an even pace and leaning close to each other.

The town was still alive with activity when they got there despite the time, night-time markets still open and lights filling the main plaza while duel monsters all chatted and had fun doing various things around the area. They didn't have to pass through it to get to Aleister's place though since he lived on the outskirts closer to the entrance, so they simply waved as they passed by to the spirits who'd noticed them enter town.

Judai'd actually brought Yusei back several times by now, mainly to explore more and have a little... _fun_ in his new room in the castle. Even if he wouldn't be staying there at all (hopefully, since staying there would mean something was _wrong_ most likely and they couldn't stay at home, which would be decidedly not good), it didn't mean they couldn't use it at all, plus the bed was bigger than theirs at home. Other than that though, they also got the monsters around the kingdom more used to Yusei's presence along with him playing a more active role in everything now that he was done with his time hopping adventures, and part of that was dropping off Yusei at Aleister's after the second visit where they continued their research discussions from the first time they met.

It was pretty obvious to Judai that they'd clicked in that regard, and he felt no worry at all leaving him there to study when he wanted to while he went off and did his job making sure other dimensions were still safe from Darkness and the Light of Ruin. He knew Aleister was completely loyal to him, at least, and wouldn't even think about doing anything to his queen... and the poor guy needed a friend for once, so this worked well for everyone involved.

Clearly that plan had succeeded since Aleister entrusted his entire archetype to Yusei, which was something he was still a little shocked by - Judai had asked him once if he had a card or not, mainly because he was a very old duel spirit regardless of appearances and it could happen where they couldn't make anymore of their own cards (a prime example being Blue Eyes White Dragon for instance, who despite being able to make cards for newer, stronger forms, could not make anymore copies of its own base card); he'd told him he did and told him about all the cards, but had simply shook his head in refusal to give them to him because they 'wouldn't be of any use to him.'

Which meant that Aleister had decided they'd be of use to Yusei and trusted him enough to give them to him, which only made Judai more curious.

He knocked lightly on the door in a pattern that would tell him it was him, humming to himself quietly in excitement.

"You're in a good mood," Yusei noted, giving him a soft smile that was quickly returned.

"I'm still curious to learn the story behind how he gave you his cards," Judai said, squeezing his hand as he did his best to stand still despite feeling a bit jittery, "That was so cool seeing those cards get used, I definitely wasn't expecting you to fusion summon at all."

"Fusion summons have gotten me out of a few tough spots before actually..." Yusei admitted, going to continue when Judai gave him a curious look before cutting himself off due to the door opening.

"I-I've been expecting you," Aleister greeted, looking a little frazzled as his hood was off and his glasses were a little skewed, "Sorry, I was- I was brewing some tea and forgot I had something running in the lab, then you knocked and-"

"Don't worry about it," Judai grinned, patting him on the shoulder and gently pushing inside so they could close the door, "As long as everything's alright, that's all that matters."

"Was it the energy converter for the plants we set up last time?" Yusei asked, closing the door behind him after following him inside, "Or the heat reader?"

"The heat reader, it actually was starting to overheat because of the Sun lupus plant and I nearly got an explosion to the face thanks to it," Aleister huffed, getting a look of understanding from Yusei while Judai simply let the words wash over his head since he hadn't even the smallest idea what they were talking about, "A-anyway, I can show the results to you later - for now, tea?"

"Tea sounds great, it's been a long day," Yusei stated, Judai nodding along next to him.

Time to find out what they'd been up to while he was making his way down the list of places he needed to check and help re-stabilize if needed.


	295. Tea Talk

_**10/22/19**_

"What kind of tea is this? It's really good..." Judai asked, sipping lightly at the hot drink while they waited for Aleister to go make sure everything was okay in the lab before anything else. The last thing he wanted was for an actual explosion to happen for some reason, especially in the guy's home, and it wasn't like waiting for a couple minutes would kill them at all.

"I know he said he was experimenting with some new blends, so it's probably one of those," Yusei replied, humming a little as he tried his tea as well, "You're right, it is good."

"If it's using stuff that grown in the gardens then I'm definitely getting the mixture before we leave, I really like it," Judai stated, taking another sip and enjoying the sweetness of it - he hadn't added any sugar or anything, but it was just naturally sweet and tasted a little like one of the new fruits from the gardens that he _still_ couldn't remember the name of to save his life.

One day, he was going to need to just sit down with a notebook and write down the entirety of the garden's inventory. Actually, he still had those unused bullet journals he'd gotten on his birthday from Thunder and Asuka...

Well, he knew what those would be getting used for now - it was just a matter of getting the info and jotting it down.

"O-okay, sorry for the wait but everything looks to be in order, luckily," Aleister greeted as he came back in the room, sitting on the couch across from them with a slight huff before pouring a cup of tea for himself.

"Not a problem, it's better to check with those kinds of things," Judai reassured him, pausing for a moment to let him drink some tea before continuing, "Anyway, I'm super curious - what's the story here? Because I was _not_ expecting that today at all, that was awesome!" He pouted a little after, tacking on jokingly, "And you never let _me_ use your cards at all..."

"Because like I told you before, my King, they wouldn't do well being in your actual deck," Aleister reminded him, pushing up his glasses a little with an exasperated look, "They may be Fusion Monsters as well, but there's too much to it to fit into your deck without messing up the balance a lot."

 _Huh, his stutter is gone_ , Judai noted curiously, only noticing because he was so used to hearing it whenever he talked with the spirit that he pretty much just expected it from him, _Usually he stutters at least once no matter what he's saying..._

Then again, now that he thought back to it, Aleister had only stuttered once when he'd spoken to them during the duel, so maybe it was just a result of getting to fight again after a while of not being able to. He wouldn't be surprised if it was and he just decided to leave it as one of the other's odd quirks.

"The Queen here brought up your tournament last time he was here, though, which lead to a lengthy discussion about different strategies and decks for tag duels, mainly because I was curious about the kinds of cards that generally got used together and how it related to actual relations in the spirit dimensions," Aleister explained, "It's a bit of a hobby, keeping track of those kinds of things."

"Then I brought up that I wanted to see if there were any particular cards either of us could use as support for each other's decks other than what we'd already come up with, and he brought out his cards to take a look at," Yusei continued next to him with a smile, "I was interested and willing to use them since they did seem to be made to work as support for your deck, and we spent a good chunk of time just going over each one and how to fit it into my deck."

"Synchro Summoning is a fascinating concept I plan to look into more when I can, it's intriguing how it translates from your game to the actual monsters themselves," Aleister stated, seeming to pause in thought before suddenly saying, "A-ah, sorry, that's besides the point - the point is we realized that my archetype would do much better in tag duels, so we came up with a way for him to use them. I asked him not to tell you since I figured you'd appreciate the surprise."

"You bet I did," Judai grinned, not minding the long-winded explanation in the slightest - he knew it was just how those two's minds worked and after being with Yusei for so long now he was more than adjusted to it, even with Yusei doing his best to simplify his explanations most of the time, "Most importantly though, did you have fun?"

He felt Yusei squeeze his hand a little tighter and saw him smile fondly at him while Aleister blinked at him in surprise before closing his eyes and smiling a little.

"I suppose I did, yes," Aleister mused, cup clicking lightly as he put it down and looked down at the liquid, "Fun, huh...?"

"Speaking of which, if there's anyone else that wants to be used in a duel, make sure they know that they can give one of us their cards," Judai mentioned, Yusei having brought it up his idea earlier with him on the ride home before he could forget about it - he'd known about a lot of the spirits living in his realm not being used to peace-time at all, but he hadn't actually put two and two together to use them in duels to curb any lust for fighting they had.

Yusei nodded alongside him, saying, "We don't mind dueling each other at all with various decks just so we can use them, it's good practice and still a lot of fun."

Aleister agreed easily to it, realizing pretty easily why they were suggesting it in the first place, and the conversation drifted to various other things regarding the kingdom, followed by a short rant by both the duel spirit and Yusei about what sorts of things they'd figured out in their research.

Also, Judai did end up getting the blend of tea in the end, along with instructions on exactly what to do. He'd probably end up turning to Aleister for information at some point for that guidebook of his...


	296. Second Attempt

_**10/23/19**_

It'd been two weeks now since Yusei'd been going out running and doing some strength training every morning with Judai, and he could already feel a major difference in not just his stamina but his strength, too. It was easier to get up and move around than before since most of their focus was on increasing his core strength, and it was actually easier to sit up straight as well - they hadn't tried his wings again yet, though, so that's what they planned to do that night.

They were back in the park they'd gone to the first time Judai brought him flying and it was just as empty as it was then, so they were in the clear this time as well. It wasn't too well lit, but it was enough for what they needed to be able to see each other.

"Alright, you _should_ be much better off this time when you summon them," Judai said, letting go of his hand now that they were there and jogging a few steps in front of him so he could get a good look, "Even if you still start to fall though I'll catch you, so don't worry about it."

Yusei hummed in acknowledgement, pulling out the right card again and activating his duel disk, "Hopefully you won't need to... here we go."

It almost felt easier to summon the second time around, the slightly more familiar wings suddenly forming behind him as he activated the card - this time he was prepared for the extra weight being added, so although he stumbled a little still it was fixed with a quick shuffle backwards. It felt much lighter this time, which meant that all that work every morning had paid off in the end - he was even able to move them this time, though it felt really weird and he was absolutely positive he'd awkwardly flail around if he even tried to flap them correctly.

He looked away from his wings, which he'd only just now noticed he'd turned to look at in awe, giving Judai a wide smile as he said, "I think I'm good this time."

"They don't feel as heavy as last time? Don't feel like you're gonna fall?" Judai asked, running up to him excitedly and pausing at his side to run a hand along one of his wings.

"Nope. I can move 'em too, though it feels... extremely off, to say the least," Yusei replied, managing to shift the wing a little closer to Judai through some stroke of luck.

"Well I know how that one goes at least, I sucked in the beginning too. You're pretty much learning how to use limbs you've never used before, but it's _so_ worth it in the end," Judai smiled, calming down a little after chuckling when the wing lightly bumped into him, "So, how did you wanna do this? I can show you mine for comparison to see how they work, but yours seems to have a lot of extra joints so I wouldn't be able to help you much with that..."

"That's true... maybe later I'll be able to ask Stardust for help?" Yusei wondered - he was pretty sure they'd be happy to help him out with this, so it was definitely something to come back to later. For now though he tried to think of any other ways Judai could help him, letting the other explore his wings some more while he did.

One particular section Judai touched made him twitch, which suddenly struck him with an idea.

"I've got it," he stated, turning his head to look back at him and catching his attention, "Just keep touching my wings like the way you are right now and I'll try to be able to feel out where the different muscles are. It'll be trial and error but hopefully I'll start to be able to move the different parts correctly."

"Ah, that'll work. Good idea, dear," Judai agreed, working his way back up to him to give him a quick hug and kiss - he had to wrap his arms up around his neck thanks to the wings and stand on his toes, which actually wasn't something he did often. He'd lean up, yes, but putting his arms around his neck? Not as much as one would think he would.

Yusei quite liked the feeling of him hanging off him like that though, so maybe one day if he wanted to tease him he'd just put the other's arms there and see how he reacted.

"I'll be gentle, promise," Judai grinned after, dropping back flat on his feet, "Let's sit down though, you don't exactly _need_ to be standing for this and I don't know how long we'll be out here."

"M'kay," Yusei said, pulling him with him as he plopped down on the ground, making sure he fell into him. Judai let out a little squeak which was quickly smothered by another quick kiss, followed by both of them laughing as both of them finally settled into their place on the ground.

"You really like pulling me around, huh?" Judai stated, rolling his eyes playfully before re-positioning himself to sit more comfortably on his lap so he could stay there and reach around to his wings, "Guess I'll just stay here for a bit then."

"I like that idea," Yusei said, wrapping his arms around his waist in a hug and resting his head on his shoulder as Judai started slowly moving his hand around one of his wings to get started.

He managed to get some parts to move correctly, but it was definitely still a work-in-progress, so they decided to just come out every night and practice for an hour or two - practice makes perfect after all, and he needed all he could get.


	297. Homework Time

_**10/24/19**_

"Hey, Judai?" Yusei asked, popping his head in the kitchen doorway just enough that Judai could see his head and not much else.

Judai paused his stirring with a blink, setting the bowl of work-in-progress cookie dough down and replying, "What's up? Did you need another drink?"

He shook his head, coming a little bit more into view as he leaned forward, "No, I'm still good on that - I was just wondering if I could use some of your notebooks. I... kind-of forgot to get my own, and all the paper I've been using nowadays is the blank ones instead of lined, so..."

"Oh, yeah of course that's fine," Judai reassured him, looking at his food before determining that he was fine to stop for a bit to go help him; he just made sure to cover the bowl completely with a towel real fast so that nothing could get into it before going to wash his hands, saying, "I'll just go help you get a few. I know there were some specific ones that I needed for an idea I had so it'll be easier for me to just go with you rather than try to describe them."

"That works, thank you," Yusei sighed lightly, fully coming into the doorway now and leaning against it with a smile as he waited for him, "I'd honestly prefer blank pages over lined, but this one class specifically asked for lined paper when doing the homework."

"Ah... yeah, in that case you gotta just go with whatever the professor wants, don't ya?" Judai agreed, drying his hands quickly and making his way over to Yusei - his hands were still plenty frozen from washing them, so for his own amusement he carefully and quickly lifted the other's hoodie to put his hands on his waist and back, grinning when he successfully pulled a little squeak and a jump from him.

"You did that on purpose," Yusei playfully glared at him, arms wrapping protectively around his own waist in reaction.

"Aw, I couldn't help it, the opportunity was just _there_ so I had to," Judai retorted, leaning up to give him a peck on the lips and cheek, "Come on though, let's get you that notebook. The sooner you finish your homework and studying, the sooner you can... uh... be done and focus entirely on anything but school."

"Uh huh, I see, _do_ tell me more," Yusei snorted, moving off the door frame and leading the way up. Judai pouted at the teasing, though one shared look with Yusei was enough to make them both start laughing.

Judai's box of notebooks and other such stationary supplies, like stamps and ink and loose-leaf pages were all kept 'neatly' in a box in their closet - in other words, it was a piled on mess, but it was organized chaos and Judai was able to navigate it far easier than Yusei would've been able to had he been by himself. Another thing of note would be that the box was stored on a lower shelf that they'd cleared out specifically for his use, mainly so he didn't have to reach up past his height to grab his own stuff, and it was something Judai wished they could do for the other closet in the hallway because he _still_ had issues getting to the extra toothpaste and floss whenever he needed it.

Yusei had suggested just keeping a stash in their bathroom, but Judai was quick to shoot that idea down for some random premise he couldn't really remember at the moment - all he knew was that it was definitely not his real reason for not wanting to, which was that he very secretly enjoyed all the times Yusei'd lean over him to get it for him.

...Gods, he loved him. It was taking all his willpower right now not to just whisk him into cuddling on the bed because he looked comfy and squishy and cute with his glasses, his hoodie and that pair of sweatpants Judai had _insisted_ he get as pajamas.

"Alright, so-" Judai started, letting out a small huff as he dropped the heavy box on the bed and started taking out the few notebooks he needed for his stuff (like his nice bullet journals), "-you can pick from anything in here. I'm taking out my stuff so if it's not in the box, you can't have it." He held up one such notebook in front of him that he'd acquired on one of their excursions around the city, which was a cute scene with Winged Kuriboh, and teased, "That means no Winged Kuriboh for you, he's going outside the box."

"I think I can live with that, I've got my own cute Kuriboh already after all," Yusei chuckled, pulling him into a hug once he was done.

Judai melted into it as best he could, savoring the feel of it to try and sate his Yusei needs and replying with a roll of his eyes, "Ha ha, yes you do - now go do your homework already, mister."

"Yes sir," he grinned, giving him a quick kiss before letting go to rummage through the box. As Judai went to leave though, he piped up with one more question.

"...When you're done with the first batch, please tell me?"

"Who do you think I am? Of course I will, don't worry."


	298. End Verdict

_**10/25/19**_

"So, now that you've officially gotten a couple weeks of classes finished, what's your verdict?" Judai asked curiously, coming up behind where Yusei was sitting in the kitchen and wrapping him in a hug.

Yusei leaned back into him, looking up with a hum and replying, "About the classes...? Well, they definitely aren't as bad as you were making them out to be. They're kinda fun at times, to be honest."

"You speak blasphemy," Judai teased, dramatically pulling back and holding a hand over his chest like hearing the words had physically wounded him, "Classes, being fun? Blasphemy."

"Surely you had some times in class that were fun, Judai," Yusei said, barely even having to look behind him to know what Judai was doing, "Somehow I don't think you'd look back on it so fondly if it wasn't at some point."

"Shh, that's supposed to be a _secret_ ," Judai grinned, dropping his hands back around him easily before he could turn around fully to look at him, "People will underestimate me more and fall easier for my charms if they think I'm some sort of weird, dumb drop-out."

"Drop-out? Didn't you say you still managed to graduate, even when you skipped the graduation ceremony?" Yusei wondered, reaching up and tugging him lightly to try and get him to sit down instead of standing. He succeeded a little bit, Judai letting go of him in favor of sitting down but pulling the chair close in such a way that he was able to lean forward and rest his head by using the chair in front of him.

"I did graduate, that's the funny part," Judai laughed, lips meeting his in the middle between them for a quick kiss, "I missed so many classes, but for a while there it was all thanks to having to save the world, and I'm pretty sure I'd still have graduated even if I'd just never gone to class ever again. At the very least whenever I did go to class back then, I usually did end up learning something useful, though that was partially thanks to Daitokuji restructuring the lessons for me on the spot..."

"Well, at least you learned _something_ ," Yusei sighed teasingly, reaching up and lightly scratching the other's hair a bit - it was cute how he subconsciously leaned into his touch, wanting more of the gentle ministrations, "My cute Kuriboh."

"I am a smart Kuriboh, I swear," Judai stated, pouting a little at him in mock seriousness before seeming to focus back in on the hand on his head, "Anyway... It's the weekend again, was there anything you wanted to do?"

"I think I just wanna relax after having that tournament last weekend," Yusei admitted, pulling back so he could lean back in his chair and stretch a bit - he'd stand up, but he'd just sat down after finishing his homework around ten minutes beforehand and didn't exactly feel like doing so, "Plus I have more homework due tomorrow, but it's simple and shouldn't take very long at all."

"That's... physics classes seem to have a lot homework, don't they?" Judai frowned, seeming to wince at the thought of him doing so much.

"Well, it's mostly busy work in my case because it's easy to me, but for people learning they really do need to do all of it to start getting a grasp on how the concepts work in different scenarios. Being able to apply five different concepts to a single problem effectively is extremely important here," Yusei explained, yawning a bit and blinking the tiredness away.

"Tired?"

"Yeah..."

"Did you want to skip the wing training tonight? I don't mind if we do, we can just eat dinner then go to sleep early," Judai asked, prompting Yusei to pick him up and practically drop him in his lap so he could properly bear-hug him.

"I love you," Yusei stated, voice muffled in Judai's hair but still audible enough for Judai to understand what he'd said - besides, even if he somehow hadn't heard him, he could probably guess what he'd said just from the tight hug he was squished in.

"Love you too," Judai hummed, tilting his head down so he could kiss his temple, "Now, how about we get some food in our stomachs? I made more than just cookies, y'know."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Some very fresh, homemade cream of mushroom soup, and pumpkin pasta."

"...Is there just a recipe for everything with pumpkin in it somehow?"

They stared at each other for a few moments before breaking out laughing, Judai snorting, "Y'know what? Yeah, there pretty much _is_ a recipe for everything that'll somehow involve pumpkin."

"I guess as long as it tastes good, then there's no problems with it," Yusei chuckled, squeezing Judai a little tighter in his arms for good measure before unwinding himself from around him to let him go, "Just don't make us get too sick of pumpkin, please."

"Don't worry, I've actually got a lot of apple recipes and stuff to practice for an upcoming event in November that Phoenix just told me about yesterday, so you won't be getting sick of eating pumpkin any time soon... hopefully."


	299. Rainy Class Days

_**10/26/19**_

 _Ah... It's finally raining again_ , Yusei noted one morning, the first one to wake up as usual; he definitely wasn't going to get out from under the covers now that he could hear the pitter-patter of the rain outside, mainly because they'd left the window open all night and it was letting in the crisp, but very cold air. In fact, he shifted a little to huddle closer to Judai to soak up more of his warmth just out of principle.

Unfortunately for him it was a school day and he had classes that started in the late morning, so he wouldn't be able to spend the day with Judai like all the other times it'd rained so far. He was sure Judai would end up insisting he bring this and that and all these other things that he would've probably forgotten about otherwise, so he'd be just fine getting through the day, but he still wished that he could just have that lazy rainy day he'd gotten used to having.

He managed to doze off for another fifteen minutes or so before Judai started to shift around, which was his queue to actually attempt to wake up - if he didn't, then Judai would probably be able to pull him back to sleep without realizing that he needed to get up for classes since he could be very slow waking up sometimes, then he'd end up being late.

The things he gave up for the sake of saving up money and keeping his job... Yusei was thankful for his impulse control though because he _needed_ to be successful, even if half the time all he wanted to do was ditch his work and focus on other things. Besides, he was very good at keeping in mind that Judai would be right there when he got back and it usually ended up being his motivation to get through the more boring classes.

Yusei steeled himself before doing the exact opposite of what he wanted and shifting the covers just off enough to expose their shoulders to the cold air, then waited for when Judai inevitably started to wake up because of it - he'd learned that Judai was actually very perceptive to temperature change, even more-so than him, so it wouldn't take very long for it to happen.

Sure enough, a minute later Judai shifted again, though this time it was paired with a grumble as he adjusted his grip on Yusei, "It's cold..."

"It's raining," Yusei replied, wincing a little at how rough his voice was from sleep and clearing his throat before continuing, "Good morning, by the way."

"G'morning... it's raining?" Judai mumbled, slowly growing aware of his surroundings and yawning, "Oh, I guess it is... can we just sleep in, it's cold."

"I have class, I can't. You can though if you want to," Yusei said, smiling fondly at the way Judai immediately reached up to try and rub the sleep out of his eyes.

"No, I gotta-" Judai started, letting out a large yawn in the middle of his sentence, "-gotta help you out, see you off. I can go back to sleep after if I really want."

"M'kay, that'll work. Thanks," Yusei stated, giving him a quick kiss in thanks and pulling a tired, but genuine and happy smile out of the other.

Both of them shivered as Yusei proceeded to throw the covers off, preferring to just get it over with now that they both were pretty much awake, scrambling out of bed to do their morning routine as quickly as possible so they could start to warm up faster.

"Yusei, I think it's time to blast the shower hot enough that it makes our skin red," Judai muttered to him as he started brushing his teeth, walking over to the shower to turn it on and start warming up the water after Yusei nodded fiercely in agreement.

"Look at it this way, at least it really means the weather is cool again," Yusei said a minute later, haphazardly tossing his toothbrush back in its place and putting a hand under the water to feel the temperature - it was slowly warming up, but it'd still be another couple minutes before it warmed up completely. That was the main problem with their shower - it took forever to heat up, but once that initial phase was over it took no time at all to switch it between hot and cold water; Yusei couldn't even go into the plumbing to try and fix it because the apartment owner didn't allow people to fix their own plumbing. Granted, Yusei knew the story behind that particular rule and could understand the hesitation to ever let someone touch the plumbing again (some idiot had flooded the third floor so bad that it leaked down to the second floor and left a ton of water damage), but it was still annoying when it was cold and all he wanted was a warm shower.

"Wouldn't be surprised if it snowed again in the next couple weeks," Judai added, testing the water as well with a sigh, "Damn it... tell the water to warm up faster, Yusei."

Yusei snorted, giving him a dry look in response, "Trust me, if I could I would've done it ages ago."

"Let's just get our clothes all ready for after then so we don't have to stand in the cold for too long," Judai said, gesturing for him to get out of the bathroom since he was the closest to the doorway, "Shoo, hurry Yus!"

"Sheesh, someone's demanding this morning," Yusei teased, complying and going out to grab all his clothes for the day.

While he did that, Judai checked his phone quickly for any notifications, which apparently weren't great judging by the frown Yusei caught as he looked up from his drawers, "There's a chance of lightning today... it's low but still, if it does happen are you gonna be okay?"

Yusei sighed, not liking the news at all but not too surprised by it either, "I've dealt with it before, I'll be fine. Honestly, if it happens during class then I'll probably be too distracted to really notice it, and it's all indoors so it's even better."

"That's true, but still... here, how about this?" Judai said, rummaging through one of the bed-side drawers for a moment before pulling out something and a pair of earbuds, "I kept it out and haven't really used it, but it's an old MP3 player of mine. I'm not entirely sure what kind of music is on it to be honest, since I mainly kept it for sentimental reasons, but you can just plug it into your laptop and put whatever you want on it. If it does start thundering, then you can plug in the earbuds and just listen to music during any breaks you have instead."

Yusei had never really sat down and explored the world of music before, so it'd be a lot of listening to see what he even liked, but he was still touched by the action and took the little device (which honestly was ancient by this point, though he took that as a good thing because usually those types of things could last for _ages_ and still work good as new) with a smile, "I'll be sure to try it out. Thanks, dear."

"Not a problem, I just want you to be okay," Judai smiled back, leaning up to kiss him lightly after he'd grabbed a bundle of his own clothes, "Now come on, it's cold and the shower is _calling me_."


	300. Recovery Night

_**10/27/19**_

Judai was worried, to say the least. That small chance of lightning and thunder ended up being true, which meant that Yusei was probably not having too great a day - he hoped that having the extra music to listen to would help him drown out the sound when he could, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to keep the earbuds in all day either. He made sure to text him every time he knew he was on break (he'd very adamantly insisted on knowing Yusei's class schedule, which was something the other was more than willing to give him) and even though the responses he got made Yusei _seem_ like he was doing fine, he couldn't help the nagging feeling in his mind that he wasn't.

It wasn't that he didn't trust him, it was just that he knew Yusei was way too good at disguising his own feelings even from himself. He prepared for the worst though, making sure that some warm comfort food was ready for him when he got home along with some of that tea that he'd gotten from Aleister - admittedly Judai just wanted the tea himself because it was simply delicious and nice to drink, but it doubled as a soothing drink to help calm down with so he'd use it for that, too.

"I'm home," Yusei called when he finally got back, covered in rain-water though his head and hair was relatively dry thanks to having to wear his motorcycle helmet. Judai was quick to grab a towel from the closet with a shadow, wanting to be quick about it, so he could ruffle Yusei's hair a bit and dry his face before letting him take it and do the rest.

"Welcome back," Judai greeted, frowning a little as he noticed Yusei was shivering; he took his bag from him and put it off to the side for now, deciding they could worry about it later.

"Thanks," Yusei said, patting himself down just enough with the towel to soak up the drops of water that wanted to drip onto the floor before kicking off his shoes so he didn't track anymore water into the apartment, "It's gotten pretty bad out there, usually my bike can block quite a bit of rain but... not tonight, apparently."

"You need to get out of those clothes before you get sick again," Judai replied, gently pushing him towards the stairs, "Why don't you go take a nice warm shower, then come down and eat?"

"That sounds good," Yusei mused, though Judai noted that he didn't un-tense at all as he slowly peeled his very wet jacket off his body and tossed it on the desk chair with deadly accuracy as he climbed up the stairs.

Clearly the thunder and lightning had gotten to him more than he'd wanted to believe it would. If the shower and some dry, clean clothes didn't end up making Yusei relax enough, then Judai was going to pull him to bed so he could wrap him in blankets, black-out the windows, and _then_ give him some warm food and tea to enjoy. Plus, if Judai stayed and cuddled with him in bed, then he could cut out the sound from outside if he needed to and prevent the thunder from bugging them.

When Yusei came into the kitchen about fifteen minutes later, he'd managed to relax some, but not enough to really make a difference to how the tense way he was holding himself. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it, so Judai was quick to turn him back around and up the stairs again while he dragged his tray of food along behind him.

"Judai?" Yusei blinked in confusion, letting himself get pushed back up the stairs but tilting his head in question.

"You're really tense, are you really okay?" Judai mumbled, pointing at the bed once they got there and getting to work bundling Yusei up as best he could while making sure it was still comfortable, "Did the music help at all during break?"

"...Oh, I am kind-of tense, aren't I?" Yusei breathed, closing his eyes and letting Judai worry over him unquestioningly now, "And yes, it did help quite a bit, actually. Thank you again for that, I know you said it had some sentimental value so..."

"Don't worry about that part, I feel far better knowing it's getting used and helping you out than anything else," Judai stated, satisfied with his work for now and setting the tray across Yusei's lap for him to eat, "Here you go, eat up. If you want more just tell me and I'll go get it for you - I'll probably be bringing the rest of the tea up anyway though."

Yusei caught his arm and tugged him lightly down for a kiss before he could pull away, giving him a soft smile that he automatically returned, "Thanks, again. I love you."

"I love you, too," Judai replied, taking a moment to simply enjoy the feeling of their foreheads touching and lips brushing each other ever-so-slightly before forcing himself to stand upright, "I'll be right back, okay? I need to finish cleaning up the kitchen, it's a bit of a mess right now."

"Hurry back, I want my living heater here with me," Yusei chuckled, taking a sip of tea to start with and letting out a hum of contentment.

To Judai's delight, it only took around twenty minutes for Yusei to finally fully relax, and it was a nice night of goofing off looking at random things on Yusei's laptop while staying huddled together and basking in the warmth with the occasional kiss.


	301. Halloween Plans

_**10/28/19**_

It was one day during breakfast that they reached a conundrum thanks to Jack. It was for the best, since it was something they should've figured out way earlier, but at least they were doing it now.

"What exactly are you guys doing on Halloween?" Jack asked, cutting at his pancakes with one side of his fork and not looking at them in favor of the food, "I know Crow's taking the day off just because he can, but what about you two?"

"That's... a good question," Yusei replied, sharing a look with Judai and smiling sheepishly - both of them had been so focused on just getting through the tournament and every-day life with getting used to Yusei's new schedule that it'd completely slipped their minds that they needed to find something to do on Halloween.

Last year, Yusei'd had it decided for him pretty easily because the twins were around and needed adult supervision to go out trick-or-treating, but this year they weren't here and had their parents for that (which they were pretty much guaranteed to have for the night because of how badly their parents were trying to make-up years of not being there), so the night was open for them to do something else. They couldn't really go trick-or-treating, not with the costumes they'd chosen since they'd be recognized pretty easily and wouldn't be able to use Judai's little shadow trick if they needed to interact with people, so that wasn't an option.

"We'll, uh, get back to you on that one," Judai ended up answering, laughing when Jack gave them both a dry stare in response.

"You guys seriously don't know? It's in only a couple days," Jack huffed, stuffing his mouth with another bite and chewing before sighing, "Then again, I only know what I'm doing 'cause Carly told me what we're doing and I'm just going along with it."

"And what would that be? We need some ideas here, help us out," Judai asked, not looking anywhere towards Yusei yet somehow knowing that he needed the syrup passed to him and doing so. Yusei gave him a quiet 'thanks' before going back to getting his second helping of food, only half-paying attention to the story as he focused on making sure it was full of as much of that berry syrup that Judai'd made as possible - it was insanely good, especially when paired with pancakes, and it was kind-of at the top of his priorities list right now.

If anything, Yusei and Jack had that in common - they pretty much let the _other_ person in the relationship plan things and decide what to do, then they'd just be there to go along for the ride. It worked well for them since they really just cared about the other person having fun with whatever they were doing, and they could agree on not minding pretty much anything that they decided on. For him, as long as Judai was happy and smiling then that was all he needed to keep going.

"Er, it was some sort of event that she wanted to both go to and be able to write a story on... I think it was one of the big community ones around here. Maybe at the central park?" Jack hesitantly replied, looking a little lost himself before stabbing one of his pancakes and looking away from them in embarrassment, "Okay, maybe I _don't_ know what we're doing, but she definitely does."

Both of them let out a short chuckle at his expense, though Yusei was quick to say after, "Don't worry, that's how I feel with Judai a lot."

"That's 'cause you're always busy, all your brain power gets used up on work and then you start to fizzle out," Judai joked, sending him a teasing smile and giving him a light punch on the shoulder before continuing, "Seriously though, that helps a bit. I'll start looking around at all the larger public events around here and see what I can find, then I'll get back to you on that." He paused for a moment afterwards before saying, "Uh, or... should I tell Carly?"

"How about _both_ of us, and Crow?" Jack snorted, raising his brows at them in exasperation and teasing, "Honestly, you two are both idiots."

"And proud of it!" Judai stated, standing up in his chair with a little grin and a hand on his hip while he cheered before he flopped back down in his chair, "Anyway though, on another note - how's the food? I haven't made syrup before like this, so I'm hoping it's up-to-par with the rest of the stuff I usually make."

At that, both Yusei and Jack shared a look before very dryly staring at Judai, both of them with forks hanging out of their mouths and already half-eaten second servings of pancakes on their plates.

"Ah... right, it's good then. Too bad Crow couldn't stay for breakfast this morning, he's missing out I guess."

"Just make it again and you'll be fine," Jack replied, clearly fishing for him to make it again on another date.

Yusei nodded enthusiastically along in agreement while Judai laughed at their antics, promising to make it again.


	302. Event Decisions

_**10/29/30**_

"So... which place should we go? The fair looks pretty cool but the park's stuff looks fun too," Judai asked later, leaning backi into Yusei's shoulder while he hugged him from behind - they were searching up all the local Halloween events near them, and so far they'd found quite a few but they simply hadn't clicked as things they'd want to go to. For instance, there were a lot of things like haunted mansions and spooky, haunted mazes where the goal was to have fun getting scared, but they didn't really _want_ to participate in that part of Halloween in particular. All they really wanted to do was look at all the costumes people had, have some sugary food or at least really good food they didn't normally have, and look at all the Halloween decorations, so while those places were definitely out, all the other places were in.

The first place they were seriously considering was another event that was being held at the closest park to them like the Tanabata Festival was (not the central park that Jack was talking about going to with Carly). It was going to be a kind of street festival again, with a lot of booths and shops being open and a lot of street food and little Halloween-themed activities and decorations to go along with it. Apparently there were quite a few more light-oriented decorations that would be shown off, so that was interesting to the both of them to want to go.

They would've gone to the central park event that Jack had said Carly was bringing him to, but the issue with that one was that there was actually a little concert being held there - they'd learned pretty quickly that it would definitely be one of the busiest venues on Halloween night, so it was scrapped pretty early on. It was a bit of a shame too, since some of the food places that were listed for the night had looked really interesting, especially to Judai as he was a sucker for any specifically-themed foods for the holidays.

The only other place they were seriously considering at this point was the fair that they'd gone to on the docks before. They held a Halloween event on Halloween night where the entire place got decorated and littered with little activities and stuff, and there were a few discounts on getting into the grounds if you knew where to look (which, of course, Judai did with a few searches of the right keywords and had found coupons not only for tickets into the fairgrounds, but also on food and drinks, which was great). A lot of the rides would get lit up with special Halloween-themed colors all night instead of the usual rave-like ones, and throughout the night anyone and everyone would be able to basically trick-or-treat by collecting stamps from various booths across the park, where they'd be able to collect candy as well; plus all the shops would be open as well and it would be interesting to see if they got anything new in specifically for Halloween. It'd be busy, but not nearly as busy as that concert at the central park would be, so it wasn't crossed off the option list.

"I wouldn't mind either, to be honest," Yusei mumbled into his hair - it was early morning the next day and both of them had happened to be up but not ready to get up, so they'd decided to finally look and choose from their options to pass the time, "I guess it's a matter of what matters more to us, food or candy..."

"It kinda is, isn't it?" Judai mused, thinking about the two options and realizing that yes, it pretty much _was_ a choice between food or candy - the park would let them get a lot of really good street food kinds of stuff while the fair would let them be able to trick-or-treat and get candy. Both of them had a lot of activities to do, and while sure the fair would seem to have the advantage thanks to all the rides, the park would just overall be more relaxing and laid-back a night.

They both stared at the laptop screen a little more before looking at each other with little smiles as they both decided on a place.

"Got yours?" Yusei hummed, shifting his arms around him to be a bit more comfortable.

"Yeah, and you?" Judai asked back, saying when Yusei nodded, "Alright, count of three, say where you wanna go - one, two three!"

"Fair."

"The fair!"

"Well, that settles it," Judai laughed, carefully moving the laptop off his lap and off to the side before turning around in place to hug Yusei back, "Glad we're in agreement."

"I honestly thought that we were going to have different choices," Yusei chuckled, leaning down to kiss the top of his head lightly, "Guess not."

"Well like I said before, great minds think alike, and what do we have? Great minds!" Judai grinned, soon after reaching for the blankets and sheets that'd fallen off of them as they moved, "Okay, back to sleep for a bit now. It's too early, it's cold, and you're warm and I wanna hug you longer."

"Now that's something I can also agree with."


	303. Hopping Along

_**10/30/19**_

The night before Halloween, Judai decided that it was finally time for Yusei to try to actually fly a bit - it'd just be a little bit, yes, but it was also the next step he needed to take and if Judai thought he was ready, then Yusei would trust him on it and try.

Over the last few weeks they'd been focusing mostly on making moving his wings feel more natural - there were so many new muscles and ligaments that it was a slow process that honestly, weeks wasn't enough to cover; Yusei was still held little confidence that he'd actually be able to go in the air, even if he could flap his wings correctly now.

 _Even then, it's only been slowly so that I don't pick up too much dust_ , Yusei mused as they walked to the park, hands locked together once again and hidden slightly inside each other's sleeves. It was a cold night, so they were wearing their matching minimalist hoodies and huddling close together to stay warm; it had the side effect of making him feel light and fuzzy despite the frosty bite of the air and he couldn't be happier at the moment.

From the looks and sounds of it, Judai was feeling much the same way, humming very slightly under his breath with a small smile permanently etched onto his face.

"Y'know, I think it's a good thing we decided on the fair in the end," Judai brought up, looking over at him from where he'd been taking in the passing sights, "A lot of the Halloween decorations around the city have already been set-up in advanced, so we get to see them now... if we'd gone to the park again we would've already seen a lot of it."

"Hadn't thought about that... I mainly chose the fair because it sounded more interesting," Yusei admitted, feeling his face heat up a little in embarrassment when Judai raised his eyebrows at him with a quirked smirk, "Judai, it was _not_ because of the rides."

"Adrenaline junkie~" Judai sang in response, leaning in as close as he could as he teased him, "Don't deny it, you already even said that you were one before, you can't take it back now!"

"I _swear_ it was not _solely_ because of the rides," Yusei begrudgingly said, editing his previous statement to be more accurate. He got a kiss from Judai as a reward though, so he couldn't stay down for very long.

"Better. Now, what was the other reason then?" Judai asked, giving him an inquisitive look as they came up to the park entrance.

How would he even begin to describe it? Yusei just got this... feeling of wanting to go when he thought of the fair again and thought of Judai. Something about knowing he'd be with him and doing all this stuff and going on rides again just made his heart long with want, which wasn't something he'd ignore any time soon. Besides, he'd pretty much gotten his fill of street food recently thanks to how many outings he and Judai had made purely because they could now that the weather was fully changed into cooler autumn weather, so going to another local park event that was mainly that along with activities that were much like the ones they'd seen during the Tanabata Festival was less appealing overall than going to the amusement park again.

"It's just... more interesting, I don't know how else to put it," Yusei replied, sighing softly as he gave up trying to put words to the feeling, "I just felt like I wanted to go there more with you."

"That's fair!" Judai chuckled before suddenly pausing, a smirk suddenly forming once again as he looked back at him, "Heh, _fair._ "

"Ha ha, very funny," Yusei snorted - it was such a bad pun, but it was Judai and that made it ten times more entertaining solely because of the cute, proud expression he wore when he delivered it, "Anyway, we're here. Shall we get started?"

"Eager, are we?" Judai teased lightly, letting go of his hand and taking his warmth with it; if it weren't for the fact that Yusei was actually excited about what they were doing, he'd be mourning the loss a lot more than he currently was, "Alright, let's see those beautiful wings of yours, dear."

The compliments were certainly a nice bonus to all this, too.

They spent a couple minutes just warming up again before going through a shortened version of their usual routine, where Judai'd show Yusei his own wings for reference and he'd try to copy it in such a way that worked with his own. After he was sure he was ready, Judai steadily went over exactly what to do again to get him to fly.

"We don't want you going too far, so think of it as just doing a small hop, but using your wings instead of your legs for the most part," Judai explained, doing a short hop himself for demonstration and pushing only a little ways off the ground with his wing flap instead of all the way, "See? You'll still crouch down and shoot up with your legs, but your wings are what'll provide the force to lift you up off the ground. I'll be right here, so even if it takes you a few tries to get a feel for how much strength you need to use you won't fall at all."

"Okay..." Yusei said, taking a deep breath to center himself before focusing completely on his wings and the rest of his body, "Short hop. Let's do this."

He stumbled a little the first time, wings touching the ground more than they should have because he'd flapped them too early, but like Judai'd assured him he was easily caught before he could fall to the ground. The second time he didn't do it hard enough, but he at least got the timing correct on the wings. Third time's the charm though, and on that one he not only got the timing correct, but found a relatively close balance to what he needed to lift off the correct amount - he could feel the pressure of the air being shot down from his wings, which pulled him up in the air and left him in free-fall for the short five seconds he'd be off the ground.

Didn't mean he could stick the landing though, which meant he fell into Judai's waiting arms right afterwards, but they were both laughing happily at the success, sharing equally excited looks as they moved onto the next step immediately after; Yusei may not be able to actually fly anytime soon, but he'd be mastering every little step along the way as much as he could so that he'd be damn good at it when the time finally did come.


	304. Halloween

_**10/31/19**_

"As much as I'd like to wear our costumes, I don't think it'd be very good for going on rides," Judai sighed while they were getting ready, both of them opting to focus on layering since it was a cold night - they'd have to shed a layer or two after a while because they'd probably get warm from walking around the fair so much (plus there'd be a lot of people there), and it'd just overall be nicer to not have to worry about something like a costume.

Especially with the wings. Those were far too complex to deal with in place like an amusement with park and hey weren't even going to try.

"Maybe next year we can do something else," Judai shrugged, giving him a smile and pausing at the happy one Yusei seemed to get that was much like a few times before - Yusei wasn't looking at him for long, but it was that type where he was happy about something he'd said or done without realizing.

Maybe one day he'd understand it, but for now he was perfectly happy just managing to draw them out of him. He would always be satisfied with a job well done pulling smiles and laughter out of his boyfriend.

"Did we get everything?" Yusei asked, already double-checking his own self before gesturing for him to pass their bag over and dumping his wallet and a few other things inside, "There we go, now I don't have to hold that..."

"I think we did... yeah we did," Judai confirmed, leaning over and glancing through the bag's contents for a minute before deciding they were good to go, "Alright, it's almost dark outside so let's go!"

They would be walking there again, so they huddled close together in the routine that they'd gotten used to over the month doing their nightly walks to the park for Yusei's flying practice, Judai swaying their hands a little as they went. When they got there they were able to skip most of the crowd since they had tickets they'd printed out at home after getting a discount, and soon enough they were inside and the sun was setting.

"We should probably do the same thing as last time - rides first, everything else second," Judai suggested, looking around at the lines and such and seeing that this was probably the least dense it'd be until closing time.

"Sounds good to me," Yusei replied, tugging his hand lightly and nodding his head over at one ride in particular, "Let's start with that one?"

It was one of those ones that was like an altered version of the teacup ride, where it spun around based on where your weight was and what angle the thing you were sitting in was currently at - that ride could get really intense, believe it or not, and they'd gone on it multiple times last time because it was short, sweet, but fun to go on. The lights on the little part of the ride were lit up in a stream of oranges and purples, and there were little Halloween streamers and other decorations littering the outside fence of it.

Everything in the park was like that, too - Halloween decorations on all parts around the outside of the ride, and any and all lights set up to be alternating Halloween colors. It gave the place a spooky type of glow that Judai was sure would only get better once the sun fully set and it got actually dark out, and it left him a little excited to see it.

"Hell yeah!" Judai grinned, pulling him with him to get in the line, which was short luckily because sometimes this ride wasn't the most popular thing for people to go on as it was often thought of a kid's type of ride (which Judai greatly disagreed with after getting stuck pressed to the wall thanks to how fast it was spinning). As usual, he applied just enough of his hiding ability around them to make people see them but not really _notice_ them enough to recognize them, which was how they'd gotten away with going to the fair the last time as well, and they had zero problems getting on the ride and all the ones after it, too.

"Okay, I think I'm done with these for the night," Judai decided a couple hours later, "I feel like my side's gonna bruise from some of these things." Yusei raised an eyebrow at him in silent judgement, so Judai quickly corrected himself, saying, "Okay, yours is gonna bruise, mine is going to hurt a little before healing before the night even ends."

"That's what I thought," Yusei stated, both of them staring at each other for a few moments in mock seriousness before laughing.

"I really am pretty much done, though. Did you want to go on another, or are you good?" Judai asked, hauling his bag back on before grabbing Yusei's hand and starting to walk again.

"No, I'm good. Besides, the lines are starting to get ridiculous, that last one took fifteen minutes to get through," Yusei replied, gripping his hand back with a smile, "I think it's time to finally do that stamp thing you were talking about."

"Oh, the trick-or-treating booths? Alright, let's get to it!" Judai grinned, pausing and only slightly reluctantly letting go of the hand he'd just started to hold so he could flip the bag around and dig through it, "The sheets are in here somewhere... ah, here we go!" He passed Yusei one of the stamp sheets that he'd quickly grabbed on their way into the park, full of empty blank squares that'd get stamped as they went from booth to booth.

"So we just... go from place to place, get candy, then turn in a full sheet and get more?" Yusei questioned, reading the little blurb of instructions at the top of the page.

"Yup! You said you've gone trick-or-treating 'cause of the twins before, right?" Judai checked, getting a nod from Yusei in response before continuing, "It's basically that, but instead of houses it's booths and the neighborhood is the entire park."

Yusei hummed, taking his hand back again once he was done zipping the bag bag up and saying, "You lead the way?"

"Yeah, don't worry I've got'cha. Let's start back towards the entrance, it's pretty close by," Judai stated, leading him through the crowd that'd formed over the last few hours with ease.

Upon getting to the booth, they not only got their stamp and candy, but they got their candy bucket as well since it was their first booth they'd visited - at least now all the similar looking buckets he'd seen around made more sense, they were giving them out for free.

Judai couldn't help but beam when Yusei shyly said 'trick-or-treat' the first time since it was so adorable; he pretty quickly lost the shyness and was smiling as he said it as they got through a couple more of the booths, but that first time where he seemed to almost stumble over the words with that hesitant shyness was precious.

They ended up passing by the shops once they were about a third of the way through, and they paused in their quest for candy to go look at all the new goods. A lot of it was the same as last time, but they focused on the places that were clearly Halloween-themed now instead of those ones. One of the Halloween shops was a costume shop, though, and they ended up looking at all the different accessories in interest.

"How do I look?" Judai asked, tipping the very-elaborately decorated witch hat with a wink towards Yusei, "I like the colors of it, and the little web lace and spiders look super cool..."

"Spooky," Yusei teased, though he got an exasperated look on his face soon after when Judai quickly put something else on his head, "This is _not_ very spooky, on the other hand."

"Aw come on, sure it is!" Judai countered, fiddling with the fluffy pair of ears he'd put on the other before holding out the collar and chain that went with it, "You're a spooky, sharp-clawed, bad-ass werewolf, see?"

"I'm _not_ wearing that," Yusei stated, though Judai could practically _see_ how thin his resolve was with a single glance at his eyes; Judai slowly started to pout, giving him those puppy eyes that he knew Yusei was weak to, and sure enough Yusei was soon sighing, "Fine, _fine_ , give me it." It took him a moment to figure out how to put it on, but once he did he tugged at it a bit and gave him a dry look, drawling, "There, happy?"

"Very," Judai replied, tilting his head a little before pulling out his phone and smiling innocently, "Smile for me?"

"I can do better than that," Yusei said, holding up his hands like they were claws and smirking a little.

Judai died a little on the inside from sheer love for him, and even more so when Yusei agreed to buying both their accessories to wear for the rest of the night. They got the rest of their stamps over the course of a few hours, taking numerous detours for food, drinks, and the random activities they saw posted around, and sat and shared the king-sized candy bars they'd gotten at the end for turning their completed stamp sheets in.

"Happy Halloween, Yusei," Judai said, leaning on his shoulder with his over-sized hat in his lap so that he even could in the first place.

"Happy Halloween, Judai," Yusei returned quietly with a smile, before it turned a little more mischievous as he broke off a piece of his chocolate bar and held it up to his mouth, "Now, say 'ah'~"

Judai never said it, but he certainly thought it was cute how having those little accessories on seemed to cause Yusei to be little more pushy and teasing, because it was something he'd been doing throughout the night with little quips and touches that Judai'd started to become hyper-aware of. Maybe it was just the Halloween atmosphere though, as Judai felt a little bit of the same way the whole time, too.


	305. Stomach Aches

_**11/1/19**_

Both Judai and Yusei crashed and slept like a light Halloween night, but poor Yusei ended up being the one with issues in the end.

"You okay?" Judai yawned the next morning, letting Yusei push him away a bit and do whatever he needed to to feel better.

"No... it's my stomach," Yusei replied, wincing at the pain and shifting so that he way lying flat on his back, "Yeah, definitely my stomach. Must've been something from last night..."

"Well we _did_ have a lot of sugar last night, it'd make sense if it were because of that," Judai noted, "Especially since you're not used to eating that much sugar at any one time."

"I have a lot of your desserts and baked goods though all the time, what the difference there?" Yusei wondered.

"Okay, sugar is one thing - I use tons of sugar in those things, but high fructose corn syrup and other such ingredients are even _worse_ than sugar, and guess what those manufactured candies are literally full of?" Judai explained, sitting up with a stretch and another yawn before continuing, "Exactly those. If you're not used to it then eating too much will really kill your stomach, mainly because my homemade foods are way healthier than those little candies. Hell, I'm pretty sure the cotton candy we got was better than those candies."

"Makes sense," Yusei huffed lightly, actively wincing again in a way that made Judai sad he couldn't just hug him right now - he knew it'd do far more harm than good if he tried to hug him, even if he had the best intentions.

"Let's see, what time is it?" Judai mused, checking his phone real quick, "It's still early morning... if you want I'll go get you some lighter tea, does that sound good?" He leaned over the other and slowly, carefully brushed some of his hair out of his face so as to not cause too much sensation, just in case Yusei got hit with a wave of nausea - he just had to do _something_ to try and help him, even if Judai knew how awful that nausea and having anyone touch him at all during it could be.

Luckily Yusei seemed to okay with it though, leaning his head gently into his hand and humming lightly with a nod as he closed his eyes, "Can you put just a little bit of honey?"

"Yeah, I can do that, that's easy," Judai chuckled, giving him a little smile and running his fingers through Yusei's hair for a bit longer before finally getting up, "Just stay here, close your eyes and try to rest a bit. I'll be right back."

"M'kay, thanks dear," Yusei mumbled, settling into the sheets again by himself as best he could at the moment. Judai had to pause and grin at the cute sight since it looked like he was close to being drowned by blankets.

When he got downstairs to the kitchen, Crow was already up and sitting at the table with a half-eaten plate of left-over dessert from the fridge, petting and paying attention to Pharaoh who was sitting up on the table so he could beg for food.

"Mornin'," Judai greeted, making sure his steps were loud enough to be heard as he walked in and made his way to the cabinets storing the mugs.

"Oh, mornin' Judai!" Crow replied, looking away from Pharaoh for only a split second before looking back at him like the cat would steal his breakfast if he wasn't careful; he wasn't wrong about that being a possibility, of course, but it was generally very rare for Pharaoh to actually steal food like that. He preferred people giving him attention and love as opposed to stealing food and getting chased away or anything like that.

"How was your Halloween? You never did tell us if you did anything besides get off work early," Judai asked, filling up a pot with water in the sink so he could boil it, "Also I'm making tea, did you want some? Yusei had way too much sugar last night and now his stomach is complaining about it."

"Ow, that's gotta suck. Sure though, I'll take some, thanks," Crow winced sympathetically, pausing for a moment in thought before answering his first question, "Yesterday I just dropped by that park you mentioned was having an event that was a few minutes away and had dinner and dessert there. I was pretty tired, but it was a nice way to still feel like I celebrated before I passed out in bed."

"Well, I'm glad you had a nice night then," Judai grinned, rustling through the fridge now for his own breakfast - he was pretty sure Yusei didn't want any food right now, just the tea, so he'd just get his own and eat it while he waited for the water to boil, "That's all that matters in the end, so mission success! Though if you want to 'celebrate' more, you could do us a favor and try to eat some of that candy in the pumpkin bucket out on the table in the living room - we got a lot last night, and I think it'll be easier if everyone just grabs one or two every time they pass by."

"Easily do-able, though Jack will complain if there's no coffee candies, which there never are so get ready for that," Crow laughed, "Speaking of Jack, he ended up staying at Carly's last night 'cause it was super late when they finally left and Carly wouldn't let him drive back half-asleep. In other words, Carly made him be responsible for once."

"Oh, did he? Well that explains why it was so quiet last night and this morning," Judai said, eventually deciding that he was feeling lazy and indulgent and pulling out a tub of ice cream from the freezer instead along with a spoon.

Crow gave him fist bump and a sagely nod of approval and understanding, digging back into his own dessert breakfast as well.


	306. Long Day

_**11/2/19**_

"I'm home," Yusei announced, letting his bag fall off his shoulder and onto the desk chair with a sigh of relief. He was greeted with a yell in response from the kitchen, though it was pretty much unintelligible thanks to the sound of dishes clanking and water running from the sink - clearly Judai'd been busy cooking again, plus it smelled really good in the apartment too.

 _Is that cinnamon or something?_ Yusei mused, sniffing the air lightly before shrugging to himself and simply going into the kitchen to ask the man himself. He walked right up behind Judai from where he was washing dishes and wrapped him in a hug, leaning down and burying his head into his neck with another sigh.

"That tickles," Judai chuckled, letting out a louder laugh when Yusei purposefully moved his head in a way that he knew would tickle him more, "Hey!"

"I love you," Yusei said, smothering the laughter with a kiss before settling his head back into his neck.

"Love you too," Judai replied, sounding highly amused with his antics as he set the clean dish off to the side to dry and grabbed another one, "Let me guess, class was both boring and tiring today?"

"Yes."

"I knew it. I'm a _genius_."

"Clearly," Yusei muttered playfully, soaking in Judai's warmth for a bit more before letting go of him so the other could finish up faster, "Is dinner in the fridge?"

"Yup, I just put it in too so it should still actually be warm," Judai said, sending him a softer smile when he looked over, "Just throw it in the microwave for like, twenty seconds if it's not warm enough, though. I'll be done in a few minutes, there's not that much left."

Yusei hummed, finding pretty quickly the odd container out that hadn't been there when he'd gotten breakfast in the morning and put a hand on it to see how warm it was - it was warm, but not enough for his tastes so into the microwave it went. He perched himself on the kitchen table while he waited the short amount of time, happily stretching and popping various parts of his body.

"So, what's in the oven?" Yusei asked, noting finally that the lights were on above the stove and that the glow from the heat inside was lighting it up. It had to be the source of the smell, which only made him more curious.

"Oh! Well, remember how I said I needed to practice apple recipes? I decided to try my hand at some cinnamon apple pie," Judai answered, sounding pretty excited by it, "Even tried to decorate the top of it, though we'll have to see how it comes out. I seriously need to make pie crust more..."

Ah, that's why he was so excited - he decorated it. If there was one thing Yusei had learned about Judai, it's that he always got more than a little excited about doing food art; he only really noticed when they'd decorated those sugar cookies together last month, but ever since then it'd been fairly obvious to him when it happened.

A quick glance at the oven timer told him that it still had twenty minutes left on it, so it'd probably be done just in time for Yusei to both eat and take a quick shower for the night. With that in mind, he took the food out of the microwave when it beeped and started eating it a little faster than usual, partly to make sure he finished quickly and partly because it was _really good_.

"...What is this anyway?" Yusei asked in between bites, stabbing another bite with his fork and making sure to get a little bit of everything on it.

"It's kinda an alternate take on chile verde... basically meat, veggies, and some extra spices 'cause I know you like it spicy," Judai replied, setting his last dish on the drying rack and turning to give him a wink, "Figured you'd like it if I did that."

"I'd like it even if you hadn't," Yusei retorted, though he gave him a thankful smile anyway, "It's definitely good like this though."

Judai took a seat next to him, pulling out the chair and stretching out over the table with a yawn, "Man, it's been a long day... sometimes I dunno what to do when you're gone, y'know?"

"I'm sure it's not that hard to come up with something," Yusei said, nudging him lightly with his leg under the table.

"It's not, but it sure _feels_ hard for those first few minutes," Judai sighed. Yusei had to smile though when he saw the way Judai almost subconsciously seemed to touch the ring on his hand, relaxing ever-so-slightly at the feel of it; it was an action he found himself doing often throughout the day as well, fingering the ring hanging around his neck and hidden under his shirt for safekeeping. Making those had to be one of the best decisions he'd made yet.

"At least my schedule's some semblance of normal for once, though - it's nice to know I'm not going to get called into an emergency meeting at one in the morning for a while," Yusei mused, scraping up the last of what was in the bowl for one more bite.

"That's true," Judai agreed, sitting back up and stealing the empty bowl right out from under him along with nabbing the fork right out of his hand, "I'll wash these, you go take a shower, okay? I'm sure you need it if today was as boring as you said it was."

"I could've done that..." Yusei mumbled, though he knew it was no use arguing and simply gave him a kiss instead, "Thanks, though I'm rushing it anyway because I want that pie, it smells too good."

"I mean, I have to let it cool for a little before I cut into it, so you've really got an extra ten minutes or so- h-hey, okay okay I get it! You gotta hurry for my heavenly, divine pie, my bad-"

Yusei still didn't stop giving him eskimo kisses until he was satisfied.


	307. Homework Break

_**11/3/19**_

Yusei winced as he stretched, moving his head and feeling his neck crack as he did so - he'd been sitting in the same, hunched over position for way too long and seriously needed to get up and move around. He'd been in the zone and gotten a ton of homework done in one shot, which was great but also meant that he'd spent hours doing nothing but write; while he was used to typing on a computer for longer periods of time than that, he was certainly not used to writing by hand for that long and his hand felt cramped. A quick look at the underside of his hand, the part that touched the page, revealed that it'd been colored silver from touching the pencil marks so many times for so long, so once he finished stretching out all the different parts that needed it he went and washed his hands real quick to get rid of it.

When he was done he made his way over to the couch, where Judai was focused on writing in one of the notebooks he'd gotten for his birthday. He wasn't entirely sure what it was about, but he didn't want to interrupt him too badly so he opted to just lightly sit on the couch with as little disturbance as possible so he didn't mess up his writing and sprawl out as best he could with a yawn.

"Well, hello there," Judai greeted with a smile a few moments later, finishing up his line before putting the notebook and his pencil down and reaching over to move him gently so he was lying down with his head in his lap instead, "Get tired of doing homework?"

"Yeah," Yusei breathed out, closing his eyes in contentment when Judai slowly started to play with his hair and scratch ever-so-slightly at his scalp, "I'm still not done, though."

"Eh, breaks are good," Judai grinned, "As long as it gets turned in on time, anything works, even procrastination!"

Yusei re-opened his eyes just so he could visibly roll them at him, which got him a laugh and quirked smirk in return. He reached up play with with a little bit of Judai's hair in amusement, twirling the long strands around his finger before brushing it to the side.

"Both of us really do need haircuts," Yusei mused, letting his arms fall after squishing Judai's face a little purely because he could and relaxing, "It was fine before but unless we really do want to start wearing them up we gotta get them."

"Did you cut your own hair back then?" Judai asked, nothing but genuine curiosity prompting the question - it was something Yusei loved about Judai, because it was so easy to talk to him about his not-so-great living conditions growing up without feeling any of the judgement he'd usually get if asked by any other person that wasn't a friend. Hell, he could talk to him about just about anything, and that was something he treasured dearly.

"Sometimes. Other times I let someone else do it if I trusted them," Yusei replied, smiling fondly as he thought back on it, "Crow and Jack were always adamant about doing it when they could, sometimes even fighting over who got to. I never really understood, but I think it was them trying to prove who was better at styling hair or had better fashion sense?"

"Gods, I can visualize that perfectly," Judai snorted, "Who do you think does?"

"Honestly? Crow. I know you've seen him with his hair down before - I don't know where he learned it from but he actually knows how to layer it half-decently," Yusei stated, watching as Judai slowly came to the same realization.

"...Oh shit, you're right," Judai realized, taking a few moment to think back to the few times he'd seen it - sometimes in the morning, Crow wouldn't bother getting ready first or grabbing his hairband so he'd grace them with the rare sight of him with his hair down, "I never really thought about it before, but you'd never know because his hair is up all the time."

Yusei hummed in agreement and confirmation, letting a peaceful silence fall between them as he closed his eyes again and simply let his mind do its best to relax for once and not think. It was always so much easier to do when Judai was there with him, so it wasn't long until he could feel himself relaxing to the point that he vaguely wondered if he was going to fall asleep; he wasn't sure if he really wanted to take a nap right now though, regardless of how comfortable he was, so he forced himself to open his eyes again and was met with the sight of Judai smiling fondly down at him.

"You tired?" Judai asked quietly, clearly not wanting to break the silence as much as he could.

Yusei shook his head slowly, answering, "A little, but I don't want to sleep..." He thought to himself a bit longer, trying to figure out what it was he wanted to do instead before finally continuing, "I feel like going out for a ride. You up for it?"

"I'm always up for it," Judai grinned, looking positively thrilled at the suggestion and leaning down to give him a light, but long-lasting kiss.

Yusei was absolutely procrastinating like Judai'd mentioned, but it was more than worth it to have a little fun racing around with Judai right behind him, cheering at the speed, and their duel spirits laughing and having fun playing around them again.


	308. Bucket List

_**11/4/19**_

"Y'know what we should do?" Judai started one day, looking up at Yusei from where he was currently lying in his lap - it was a non-class day for Yusei and they were fully enjoying lazing about in bed still despite it being almost noon. After getting a light hum from Yusei in response, he continued, "We should make a list of all the stuff we've been meaning to do, 'specially now that we have the time for it. I don't know about you but I've forgotten like... half of it already."

"We can do that," Yusei agreed, tapping a few times on his phone to pull up a note app he could use and hovering it in front of Judai's face so he could see, "I've forgotten most of it too, so it can just be a bucket list of things. Start me off with a few, we'll see if we remember any as we go."

"Well, I remember we've been meaning to go to the arcade again. We kinda stopped doing it when things got hectic over the summer and we never went back," Judai said, closing his eyes in thought as he listened to Yusei type the suggestion into the list, "We promised a lot of duel spirits duels, so we'll have to do that at some point relatively soon. Uh... you got anything?"

"Changing out the decorations," Yusei added, pausing to look down at him with an amused grin, "You're the one that was going on about that yesterday, did you forget already?"

"Oh hush, I'd remember the second I went downstairs and saw the 'Happy Halloween' banner across the living room," Judai glared playfully, pouting a little before pursing his lips in thought again, "Well, I've got a few new things, I guess."

"New things are good," Yusei smiled encouragingly, prompting him to continue.

"Okay, then add the zoo and the aquarium to the list," Judai said, tapping lightly at the back of the phone idly in amusement, "I figured it'd be fun to go see all the animals and sea life. You ever been to either of those?"

"I had to go to an aquarium for some sort of big event, but I didn't actually see much of it... there was a separate event hall area for it in a connected building, and that ended up being where I was for the short amount of time I was required to be there," Yusei replied, "Sounds fun, though - good idea, Judai. Anything else?"

"Not really... which sucks because I _know_ there was more than this that we'd thought of," Judai sighed, "Oh well, I guess from now on whenever we think of something we can just pop it onto the list and look at it later."

"True enough. I'm adding VR on there though, now that I think about it."

"Oh yeah, that'll work. I still want to finish unlocking as many of those guild hall decorations as soon as possible - speaking of which, wasn't there a new seasonal set that came out or something?"

"It's got a bunch of leaf-patterned everything, from carpets to wallpapers to furniture," Yusei shrugged, not appearing to know the rewards very well, which Judai expected from him given the fact that he didn't play for that kind of stuff like Judai did and was just along for the ride most of the time, "I do want to maybe try out a few of the other games you said you'd been playing, like the one that got you to want to bring me flying that first time. You said it had air combat?"

"Yup, that's the one!" Judai confirmed, sitting up suddenly from his lap so he could turn and wrap his arms around him instead, "I remember that conversation very well, Mr. I'm-Made-Of-Gold."

"It was for not even thirty seconds," Yusei grumbled, face heating up a little at the reminder that he'd told him that story and promptly gotten embarrassed to hell and back about it, "I guess I'll add flying now, too."

"Make sure to tag it with 'actual' flying," Judai teased more, though this one did the opposite of last time and pulled a laugh out of Yusei instead.

"I think I'm almost ready for it, just a few more nights of practice and then I'll be able to try it for real," Yusei smiled, putting his phone off to the side for a moment so he could return the hug easier, "See, filling up the list will be easy, guaranteed."

"I guess you're right about that," Judai blinked, pulling back for a moment to give him a quick peck on the lips and a quirked grin, "There's one other thing I guess I could add to it, though I was kinda hoping to make it a surprise. It might not work that way though, so... why not?"

"...I feel like I should be very worried now," Yusei stated, raising an eyebrow at him and tilting his head in question, "What's the suggestion?"

"I wanna see you in a dress, _purely_ because you getting the title 'Queen' made me think about it," Judai admitted, snickering at the way Yusei had frozen staring at him, taking a moment to be able to fully process the words, "Aw don't worry, I'll get one too just so you don't feel left out, and we'll stay here in the room for the entire duration, obviously. I just figured that it'd be easier overall if I told you about it though because then you can help me pick one out - a willing subject is significantly easier to work with and far more fun, after all."

Yusei let out a deep sigh of exasperation once he'd finally broken out of his little daze, sending him a look crossed between wanting to hug him and wanting to smack him, but he picked up his phone and typed in 'dresses' to the list regardless so Judai considered it a victory. At least he got to see Yusei get all flustered and cute when he pulled out his sketchbook immediately after and showed him the drawings he'd made of him wearing all sorts of different dresses.


	309. Autumn Decor

_**11/5/19**_

"Alright, here we go," Judai stated, taking a deep breath in the middle of the living room as he gazed out at all the Halloween decorations that were still everywhere in the apartment, "Time to clean all this up and get the new stuff there instead."

Yusei, being the wonderful boyfriend he was, had oh-so kindly driven him back to the party supply store once again so that they could comb through the isles for more general fall decorations this time instead of Halloween ones. While they did that, there were plenty of Christmas decorations up for sale, but they figured that they should probably stick to just one thing at a time, especially since it meant that they'd just have to go out _again_ and make another day out of it like they'd ended up doing with this one.

What a shame - they'd have to go get lunch beforehand and dessert right after just because that's what they'd done today. Neither of them would complain about something like that, of course, and simply looked forward to the day.

Judai was quick to employ Yusei and put him on 'tall things' duty, where he'd take down the stuff from the walls that Judai was too short to reach. Granted, Judai could've used his shadows to get them down incredibly easily, but the way they were able to work together to decorate and pass the time was half the fun, so he didn't use them except for this one decoration that Jack had placed way up high where neither of them could reach; of course he used it to get that down, he wasn't about to make them have to pull out a ladder or something just to get down a single, highly-placed ornament.

"Why did he have to place it so high?" Judai grumbled as he took it down, dropping the decoration into his hand to look at it before carefully putting it into the bin Yusei had found and provided specifically for storing all their decorations, "I swear, Jack just wanted to pull one over us."

"More like he wanted to annoy you, probably," Yusei chuckled, noting that Jack had clearly succeeded and his efforts hadn't been for naught, "I'm willing to bet he's still holding a grudge against you for that time you turned his monsters against him."

"It's not _my_ fault that the Resonators happen to always be up for pranking their owner in some way," Judai grinned in response, taking the little sparkly pumpkin figure that Yusei handed him and finding a spot for that one in the bin, too, "Plus their teamwork is impeccable, so it makes executing any plans much easier to do."

"Well, wouldn't any duelist's monsters be able to work together well?" Yusei asked, giving him a curious look as he thought about what he'd said, "I mean... they have to work together well in order for the duelists to use them together in combos, right?"

"Yeah, but one thing I've come to discover recently is that tuners are on a whole 'nother level in terms of teamwork capabilities," Judai explained, stopping what he was doing for a moment while he did so, "Tuner monsters seem to just click with all other monsters and spirits, whether or not they're actually related. Since the Resonators are all tuners, they all get along incredibly well and their teamwork is really something special. I've found that quite a few of your monsters that are tuners, like Junk Synchron, do extremely well running around and doing errands for other monsters, which ultimately keeps up material distribution which is _very_ important there at Starlight Junktion, as you probably have realized by now."

"True, I did notice that while I was there," Yusei admitted, taking a break as well and pondering over the new info, "Whenever someone needed to be found or a part was needed, there was a system in place that made it incredibly easy to find what you were looking for. I hadn't put two-and-two together though that Synchron was a major key in the process of it... makes sense, considering how quick he is to help out anyone who he thinks might need it."

"All your duel spirits share so many personality traits with you," Judai smiled, poking him lightly in the chest when Yusei simply blinked at him in confusion, "Don't give me that look, you know what I mean. You've got a heart of gold, Yusei."

"I-I wouldn't necessarily say that-" Yusei tried to reply, feeling a little embarrassed at the praise, but he was cut off by Judai leaning in close and grabbing hands, looking up at him with a smile that told him he wouldn't take no for an answer.

"Thanks for proving my point, dear," Judai laughed, leaning up enough to press their lips together briefly before joking, "Does that make you a tuner type? Always so nice and helpful to anyone who needs it..."

Yusei rolled his eyes, yes, but he couldn't stop the little huff of laughter that initially came out upon hearing it which meant that Judai was now smirking happily and looking far too pleased with his handiwork once again. That was easily fixed by pulling him tightly into a hug before lifting him up off the ground and swinging him around, turning that self-satisfied smirk into a flustered smile as Judai held onto him and started begging to be put down when he didn't stop after five seconds.

It'd take a few more hours than it probably should have taken them to finally finish putting all the new autumn decorations up, filling the apartment with fall colors, leaves and arrangements, but it was definitely more fun taking their time with it.


	310. Work Day Morning

_**11/6/19**_

For once, Judai actually had his job line up with one of Yusei's class days, so he'd hopefully get to come home and feel like a lot less time had passed than it actually had. It was the event he'd had to practice all those apple dishes for and he was pretty excited, all things considered - from what Edo had told him, it was some sort of school event, hence why the requests were all more on the home-cooking style of foods; it was part of the reason Judai had been practicing his decoration so much, because he knew taking that extra thirty seconds to put little decorations on top of a pie would make an elementary kid student's day.

Well, he hoped at least. When he was a kid it would've, and based on all the times beforehand where he'd cooked for kids it did, so it _should_ apply to this situation as well.

"You're awfully awake this morning," Yusei noted while they were both getting ready for the day - he'd just come out of the shower, which meant it was Judai's turn to do so now, "You're not normally so energetic."

Judai simply kept humming, picking out his clothes for the day and spreading them out for easy access once he was ready for them, replying, "I'm just excited for work, believe it or not."

"I can believe it - I've had days that were like that too," Yusei said, shaking out his hair a little in a way that Judai had to smile at - it made him think of a cute animal shaking out its fur after getting wet and was very endearing. Judai tossed his jacket over to him, which Yusei caught and gave him a grateful smile for in return, "Thanks. And see, you _are_ a good older brother type."

"Oh man, I forgot about that debate..." Judai laughed, feeling Yubel perk up at the conversation topic.

" _I still say that you're excited mostly because you're a child at heart, but I suppose it's also true that you like kids_ ," Yubel admitted, sounding amused as she said it, " _Well, so long as you don't have to be the one taking care of them. Remember that disaster a few years ago?_ "

 _We_ _ **never**_ _were to speak of that again!_ Judai hastily retorted, feeling his brow twitch outwardly as he did his best to hold back his embarrassment. However, even Haou had roused with the reminder, snickering a little at the memory and ensuring that neither of them would be likely stop reminding him about it for a few days.

Yusei was giving him a curious look when he finally re-paid attention to his surroundings, though, so Judai had to give a little bit of explanation, "Sorry, Yubel was far too happy with the reminder about that, then promptly told me that I was excited because I myself was a child at heart."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Yusei assured him, walking over to stand next to him and brushing his hair out of his face with a soft smile, "Pretty sure everyone's a child at heart in the end, too."

Judai knew it was true, especially with Yusei being a prime example of it - he was quiet, cool, and occasionally broody, but every time Judai showed him something new or something interesting his eyes would light up with that child-like wonder he'd come to love seeing on him. He was just a big softy at heart and a sucker for learning, and he'd seen this same sort-of look (though significantly more muted) on Crow and even Jack at times. It was like they finally were getting all those childhood experiences and Judai could honestly say that he was glad they were able to, not letting the fact that they were adults now and each had busy schedules prevent them from enjoying life to the fullest.

He leaned up and pecked Yusei right on the tip of his nose, chuckling at the way Yusei blinked cross-eyed for a second right afterwards before they both had silly grins on their faces, "I say it's a good thing, and that I can totally be _both_ at the same time."

"A child and an older brother? Yeah, that's a pretty good description of you sometimes," Yusei stated, laughing easily when Judai pouted and lightly smacked his arm to retaliate, "What? It's true and you know it."

"Yeah yeah, you're just showing off because you're top of the 'best older brother' leader-boards right now," Judai teased, poking him in the side and sticking his tongue out slightly, "I'll show Yubel I'm quality older brother material and surpass you soon enough, I'm sure of it."

"Go take your shower, you cute Kuriboh," Yusei sighed exasperatedly, rolling his eyes slightly as he gently pulled him to the other side of him and pushed him towards the bathroom door, "You have to leave before me, and that's in what, thirty minutes?"

"Yeah... I'll probably have to dry my hair. Now that it's gotten this long it's not drying as fast as it used to," Judai mused, tugging on a few of his locks so he could look at them and make a rough estimate of how long it'd probably take him to do so, "Maybe I could just tie it back and call it a day."

"Decide later, shower now," Yusei reminded him, catching him before he could distract himself too much on accident. Judai sheepishly smiled at him, pulling him down for another quick kiss in thanks before quickly hopping in the shower.


	311. Home Early

_**11/7/19**_

When Judai got home, he was surprised to find that a certain red D-wheel was parked in its usual space, meaning that Yusei was home as well for some reason. He'd been expecting to come home to an empty apartment, seeing as it was roughly four-o'clock in the afternoon, but he wasn't about to complain about it; he wasn't worried either since he knew that if something bad had actually happened, Yusei would've just texted him, and he hadn't.

"I'm home," he called out, shutting the door behind him with a foot while balancing the leftovers in his hands - he'd had a surprisingly large amount of them to bring home this time, though it was mainly because they'd overcooked like the school had instructed them to just in case because they really, _really_ didn't want to run out and have to deal with a bunch of crying kids. At least they were really good and not too heavily on the sweet side for the most part, so none of them should have any problems eating them up.

Yusei popped his head out of their room, giving him a little smile and coming downstairs to join him, "Welcome back. How was the job?"

"Just as fun as I'd hoped, plus I've got a ton of food for us," Judai replied, sighing a little in relief when he finally put the bags down on the desk for now so he could pay some attention to Yusei instead by wrapping his arms around him in a hug, "What're you doing home so early?"

"My last class got cancelled, then the class before that got let out early because there's a test next week and it was an open studying period," Yusei explained, returning hug and letting out a small huff as he rest his head on top of his, "And you know me, I don't really need that."

"No, you really don't," Judai agreed, feeling any of the tension he could've had from work start to dissipate the longer they stayed like this - it was nice, just being able to hug him and bury his head in his shoulder like this. He hadn't known he'd needed this today, but he was very happy now that he had it.

"...So, what's in the bags?" Yusei asked, clearly seeing that Judai was _not_ going to be moving anytime soon.

"Food," Judai said simply, not even bothering to lift his head up so that his reply wasn't muffled.

"I never would've guessed," Yusei drawled, sounding highly amused as he brought a hand up to start threading through Judai's hair, tugging the little hairband that was holding it back off in the process. It made Judai melt into him even more, humming a bit as he felt finally relaxed.

"It's stuff like apple turnovers, pastries for the most part," Judai eventually answered, still mumbling into Yusei's shoulder but at least audible enough for the other to understand what he was saying, "Sweet, but not too sweet. Just try one."

"Don't mind if I do," Yusei chuckled, reaching over to the bags and trying to take a step forward. Unfortunately for him, Judai was still latching onto him, very determined not to let him go until he'd gotten his fill, so it was significantly more difficult a task than it should've been; luckily though, the bags weren't more than a few steps away, so it wasn't long until he was digging through boxes with one hand while trying (and failing) to reach around Judai with the other.

"Judai, I need my arm," Yusei laughed quietly.

"It's mine, you can't have it," Judai whined, squeezing him tighter in response.

"I'm hungry..." Yusei mumbled, saying it in such a way that Judai was sure that if he were to look up, he'd get a rare dose of Yusei's puppy eyes.

"...Fine," Judai relented, shifting himself in such a way that he was still hugging him, but now Yusei could use both of his arms in front of him, "Better?"

"Much better, thank you," Yusei stated, bags shuffling around and one of the boxes getting opened, "That's a bit bigger than I thought... are there napkins in here?"

"There should be some on the bottom."

Yusei hummed, digging them out and grabbing what Judai could only assume was one of the turnovers seeing as those were pretty big and the only things he could see needing a napkin to hold to eat due to the slightly-sticky sugar coating on them. The first bite was quickly followed with a hum of contentment, the second bite occurring not long after.

"Delicious as always," Yusei smiled, nudging him a little with his shoulder that he was leaning on, "Want some?"

"Sure, why not?" Judai decided, looking up at him and the pastry that was suddenly next to his face before opening his mouth and taking a bite, enjoying the sweetness of the sugar and apples before continuing, "That _is_ good."

Yusei shot him a curious look, asking, "Had you not tried it yet? I would've thought that you had at some point."

"Not any of today's batch, I hadn't," Judai replied, giving him a grin and stating, "You should go try it with ice cream, it's really good that way."

Silence fell between them, both of them staring straight at each other with equally determined and amused looks.

"...So, are you going to go or...?"

"I have a certain Judai weight stuck to me, how am I supposed to go?"


	312. Aquarium Tickets

**_11/8/19_**

"Hey... you don't have any major projects coming up or anything, right?" Judai asked, causing Yusei to wake-up slightly from where he was dozing on the bed - he was laying back on the pillows with his arms wrapped around Judai's waist, who was sitting in-between his legs in front of him and using his laptop to pass the time.

"No, I don't," Yusei mumbled in reply, yawning a little before closing his eyes again. It was nice to be able to nap like this without worrying about any deadlines or work and it was something he got to do nearly every day now if he wanted considering the relatively short amount of time his classwork and homework took him to complete; even the labs he was required to do didn't take long since it was group work and he only had to do a third of it, plus they were extremely simple compared to the stuff he was used to. He could crank out full work reports in hours, so he could easily do a third of a class lab report in an hour depending on whether he was assigned to do calculations or not.

 _I feel spoiled_ , Yusei thought to himself, shaking his head internally, _No, wait, I am_ _ **definitely**_ _, without a doubt, spoiled._

He would forever point his fingers at Judai for being the reason he was spoiled so much - before him, he didn't get ridiculously high-quality meals every day and miracles where he occasionally got the day off work, and now look at him.

The sound of keys getting tapped lulled him back to sleep again for a while, the familiarity of it combined with the warmth he was getting from Judai combining to be more soothing than he'd imagined it could be. He didn't bother wondering what the question was for either, figuring that Judai would probably explain later, and just patiently waited for the time to come.

He wasn't sure how long it took, but he was eventually woken up again by some light tapping on his arm, blearily blinking awake to see Judai turned on his side and looking up at him from his chest with a fond smile.

"Sleepyhead, guess what I just got?" Judai asked, smile turning into a silly grin now that he was awake (slightly) and paying attention. Upon hearing Yusei hum questioningly in response, he continued, "Two tickets to the city's aquarium! Wanted to cross that one off the list and there was a deal out for discounted online-order tickets, so I figured why not?"

"That should be fun," Yusei smiled - it was small and sleepy, but Judai's eyes brightened ever so slightly anyway at the positive response.

Judai turned back around for a moment to move the laptop off his lap and safely off to the side before turning fully around to face him, finally returning the hug that Yusei'd been holding him in and using his chest as a pillow.

Of course, in Yusei's sleep-addled state he entirely focused on how squished Judai's cheek became when he did so and promptly felt the overwhelming need to squish the other one to match it, so he did after releasing the vice grip he'd had for the past couple hours. He ended up squishing Judai's entire face in the process and laughed at the confused look that overcame the other when he did it.

"Whatsh thish for?" Judai tried to say, words skewed from the fact that his mouth was getting squished as well.

"Because you're cute," Yusei responded simply, frowning a little when Judai rotated his head so his chin was on his chest instead so his face could stop being squished. He fixed that issue very quickly by bringing his other hand up, using both hands now on either side of his face to play around with his cheeks.

"Yushei~" Judai whined, pouting as best he could considering the circumstances though not doing anything to stop him, "Thish ish making my cheeks hurt..."

"Just a little longer," Yusei muttered, almost completely un-phased by the puppy eyes Judai tried to pull that were ruined by the squished face and giving his own pair of puppy eyes in revenge; Judai fell for them almost immediately, relaxing and even leaning slightly into one of his hands with a look of defeat now.

Once he'd gotten his fill a minute later he relented, chuckling at the exaggerated sigh of relief Judai gave and hugging him again, making sure to keep an eye on Judai's hands to make sure he didn't try to pull the same thing on him now that he could.

"Have fun?" Judai questioned, raising his eyebrows at him with a small smile on his face that Yusei was sure was only small because of his cheeks being sore from all the squishing.

"Yes, very much so," Yusei smiled back, feeling a lot more awake thanks to getting his daily dosage of Judai.

"...So why are you hugging me so tightly? Worried I'm gonna do the same thing to you now?" Judai asked after tugging slightly on his arms and realizing that Yusei's grip on him was preventing him from moving them too much away, and certainly not far enough to reach up for his face.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Uh huh, sure you don't."

"So tell me about the aquarium?"

"...I'll get my revenge later when you're not expecting it. Anyway, so the aquarium-"


	313. Aquarium Entrance

_**11/9/19**_

"This place is a lot bigger than I was expecting for some reason..." Yusei mused, looking up at the very large building that held the city's aquarium inside. It was one of the larger buildings in the city, if he had to guess, and he was pretty excited to see what was in store.

Yusei liked the sea, as he'd once stated before. He grew up right next to it, with that salty sea air littering the Satellite with its scent, and it was something that'd been a constant throughout his life that never, ever changed - it didn't matter that years had passed, he could still wake up in the morning or go out at night and see the same waters lit up and contrasted by both the city and the sun. It was part of the reason he almost never objected to going to the little viewpoint of the bridge whenever Judai felt like going out to it, as going there always ended up being relaxing in the end, looking out at the ocean and the waves as they crashed into the shoreline and bridge supports.

He'd never really explored the side of the sea filled with wildlife, though. There were a few occasions that he'd seen seals and once even the water spout from a whale from one day during his teen years, when he'd happened to see it by luck one morning when he'd gone out to get some air after being stuck in a stuffy, worn-down building for too long, but otherwise he hadn't encountered many at all. The waters around the city and the Satellite weren't the cleanest waters ever; even with the improvements that'd been done in recent years, it was still garbage-ridden and overall not the first thing you'd want to go swimming even, let alone try to live in if you were an animal.

Certain sections were cleared out of filth, though, and were safe to inhabit. Considering the aquarium was located basically right on the shore, much further down the line than the dock that held the amusement park for perspective, he wouldn't be surprised if one such area was cleared out right along the side of the building - then it could be used to hold animals and other various things if need be.

"I haven't been to an aquarium in _years_ ," Judai admitted, looking even more excited than he'd been before they stood directly in front of the building, "and definitely not to one that was this big. And from what I saw online, they've got this huge outside area for people to interact with, so it just makes it even bigger."

Guess the city really wanted to make sure its commodities were up to snuff - they had to keep morale and local opinion of its government positive in some way or another, especially when the merge started happening, so having places for people to go to like the zoo or aquarium was a good way to divert their attention elsewhere. Honestly, it was one of the few decisions by the higher-ups that made that Yusei fully supported since it fueled a lot of good research and was done in a way that ensured the animals were happy and healthy.

"Well, no time to waste then if we want to cover as much ground as possible," Yusei smiled, threading their hands together and leaning down to peck him on the forehead, "Lead the way, Kuriboh. You're the one with our tickets."

"Oh ho, you just reminded me about how your hair is shaped like a crab, and guess what we'll get to see at some point?" Judai laughed, earning himself an exasperated look from him.

"I'll just have to figure out what animal or plant your hair looks like from here, too," Yusei retorted, holding back the urge to just... reach up and ruffle that fluffy hair on his head. It was just _begging_ to be fluffed up even more and he so badly wanted to give into the temptation, but he didn't for Judai's sake since they were in public, even if they were being ignored for the most part thanks to Judai's shadows. They could still show up in the backgrounds of photos, after all.

"Good luck with that one, if you do find something similar then I'll be amazed," Judai challenged, letting go of his hand and motioning for him to turn around so he could dig through the backpack he was wearing, "Also, in case you forgot, _you're_ the one with our tickets. I put them in the bag so we couldn't forget to bring them, remember?"

"Ah... right, my bad," Yusei replied sheepishly, standing patiently while Judai rustled through the backpack for a minute or two before finally emerging victorious with the printed papers containing their tickets, zipping up the bag very quickly afterwards, "Okay, now we can go, right?"

"Yup! We're all good, let's go!" Judai cheered, taking his hand once again and this time dragging him along for a few steps before Yusei caught his balance and strode next to him.

They got through the ticket area easily enough, getting the map from the entrance and entering into a large, open room that was only sparsely filled with people since it was still only about twenty minutes since the aquarium had opened. Both of them looked up only to see a huge, life-sized replica of a blue whale hanging above what seemed to be the entrance's food court, and they knew that it was going to be one hell of a day.


	314. Figuring Out Things

_**11/10/19**_

Seeing the innocent look of wonder that came over Yusei right at the beginning as they stared up at a huge underwater viewing glass (granted, it was easily matched by his own, he was sure) was all Judai needed to be convinced that this had been a great idea. The one they were in front of was one of many, but it was the biggest one of all of them and let them see hundreds of creatures co-existing under the water.

The water and glass caused a bit of a blue reflection down on them, but Judai found that it just made the sight even better and really brought out he sparkle on Yusei's face. He almost wanted to take a picture of it, but he refrained from doing so, knowing internally that it wouldn't be nearly as good as he wished it would be.

"There's so many different kinds of fish in this one area..." Yusei marveled, staring at organized chaos unfolding on the other side of the glass; Judai noticed that he was sub-consciously inching closer himself to the glass panel like he was going to squish his face against the glass, and soon enough the image was stuck in his head and too funny not to let out an accidental laugh of amusement.

This ended up being what was needed to catch Yusei's attention again, and upon seeing the happy but confused look he was giving him, decided to explain, "You're slowly inching closer to the glass, I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up squishing your face up against it like in all those cliches and stuff."

Yusei flushed as look of realization fell over him, looking away sheepishly back at the glass and saying, "I didn't... realize I was doing that. Or that we were so close to it in the first place."

"I know, you're cute, you don't have to tell me twice," Judai teased, poking him in the cheek a little and enjoying the red on his face before finally relenting with a fond grin, "Come on, we can come back here later. There's tons of other stuff to see and we won't be able to hit all of it unless we start now."

"Okay," Yusei mumbled, being the first one to thread their hands back together even if he was still looking away out of embarrassment. He took a deep breath, which seemed to work well in helping him re-center himself, before finally being able to look at Judai again and return the grin, "I still have to find something that looks like your hair, after all."

"And like I said, good luck with that," Judai retorted, feeling relatively confident that he wouldn't be able to find something - he couldn't think of anything off the top of his head, so he was pretty certain there wasn't anything that came close.

" _You're literally jinxing yourself,_ " Yubel snickered mentally, laughing more when he pouted at her in return.

 _You're the one jinxing it by mentioning it!_ He complained, though he was quick to add on, _Oh, if you see anything you want to look at more, just tell me okay? We'll stay, I know Yusei wouldn't mind in the slightest._ _That goes to you too, Haou._

" _As if I'd find anything interesting enough,_ " Haou huffed, his words completely contrasting with the fact that he was currently paying attention to what was going on and had been doing so since they'd reached the aquarium. Still, though, Judai wasn't going to call him out on it - it was significantly easier just to let him do his thing, especially since Judai wanted him to have fun whenever he could, the same sentiment applying to Yubel as well (though he could call her out without worrying most of the time because of how playful she was).

"So... which area should we go to, anyway?" Judai asked, pulling on Yusei's hand lightly to tug him to a stop so they could look over the map, "There's a lot here, and they're based on the uh... living conditions?"

"Biome."

"Right, that thing. They're based off that and a few other things for the more specific ones."

"Well, how about this one? It looks like it all goes in loops on the second floor so we'll always end up back at the start anyway, so it'll be easy to go around the entire floor," Yusei suggested, pointing at the place on the map he was talking about, "Plus the door to the outside section is there, so we'll be able to go check that out right after... hopefully it's not too sunny outside."

"It's not supposed to get very hot today, don't worry. I'm pretty sure it's actually supposed to get foggy," Judai reassured him before agreeing with what he'd said, "Sounds good to me, though. Guess we'll just cover the first floor last, then."

"It's not like there's a particular order, anyway," Yusei shrugged, carefully folding the map back up before handing it off to him for safekeeping.

Once he'd gotten everything all packed away and ready to go, Judai was about to lead him off again before pausing, saying after a little bit, "Uh, I know I said we gotta get going, but I'm really thirsty. Let's get drinks first?"

Yusei simply chuckled and gave him a smirk, "Of course we can. I should've expected this, really."

...He wasn't _that_ predictable, was he?


	315. Penguin Exhibit

_**11/11/19**_

"Whoa!~ Look at them dive for those little fish, they look cool!" Judai cheered, doing exactly what he'd been teasing Yusei about earlier and leaning awfully close to the glass like he was ready to press his face against it. He probably would've, to be honest, if it weren't for the fact that that would mean he couldn't see all the penguins that were out and about and currently in the middle of getting fed; as it turned out, their feeding time was pretty early in the morning for this aquarium, so they'd just happened to stumble across them by pure luck from choosing to see the polar section of the place first. Plus, since they were inside the wing and not up on the outside watching, they got a clear view of all the penguins that dove down to get the food that dropped, which people up top wouldn't get to see.

"They're pretty fast in the water," Yusei noted, which prompted Judai to glance over at him for a second before seeing his face and grinning. He had that analytical look again, that one of curiosity and wanting to learn everything and anything about something - Judai was willing to bet that he was trying to figure out just how they worked purely from watching them swim around and dive.

 _I should probably take extra time reading all the plaques_ , Judai suddenly realized, _I may just glance over them but he probably is soaking them up and actually learning the stuff._ _Hopefully I haven't been rushing him..._

Ah well, at least now he could keep it in mind when the time came for them to continue onward.

Looking back to the penguins, Judai felt a an inkling of an idea form in his head so he paused to _really_ look at them, trying to figure out what it was his brain was trying to tell him. It took a minute or two, but suddenly he realized that these penguins were northern rockhopper penguins, and that their fur was _spiked_ and colored _black with yellow highlights_.

"Oh my gods, _Yusei_ ," Judai started, catching the other's attention easily and smirking, "Yusei, we've found your _brethren._ Look at their colors! And they've even got spike-y hair off to the side like you, too!"

The pained look of realization he got in return was absolutely beautiful and only made his smirk grow wider as Yusei's hand twitched in his grip while the other one had nothing holding it back from allowing him to face-palm.

"Aw come on, at least they're cool like you are," Judai stated, nudging him lightly in the side and letting his smirk fade into a lighter smile, "I once met a Nightmare Penguin duel spirit and man, that guy was not cool at all - in fact, I'd say that having to work with that guy was a _nightmare_."

"...Nice one," Yusei sighed, accepting his fate for now and shaking his head slightly in exasperation, "Please tell me that he wasn't also one of these guys, though."

"Naw don't worry, he may look a little like them but he's got blue fur and the yellow parts on him look more like super big eyebrows than hair," Judai assured, leaning up a pecking his cheek now that a hand wasn't blocking it, "Regardless of that though, no matter what you get compared to you will _always_ be cooler."

"That's a little bit of a stretch, don't you think?"

"...You still don't realize just how much of a bad-ass you look like, do you? I've told you this how many times now?"

"Many, but I still don't really see it," Yusei said, looking off to the side a bit in embarrassment about the topic but managing to compose himself rather quickly again, "Anyway, it looks like they're pretty much done feeding them for now. Ready for the next part?"

"Yup! Let's go!" Judai chirped, letting him drop the conversation for now - one day though, _one day_ , Judai would manage to get it through his thick, gear-filled skull that he was not just good-looking (a severe understatement in his opinion, but really all he could hope for Yusei accepting at this point) but also super cool as well as a whole. There was a reason the twins looked up to him so much, and it wasn't just because they thought of him as an older brother or as a fellow signer.

Yusei had showed him recordings of some of his roughest duels from the WRGP, mainly because he wanted to prove a point about how much destruction solid vision could actually cause if too much duel energy got pumped into it but also because he just... wanted Judai to see the kinds of stuff he'd gone through. It was his own way of sharing his story and he ended up looking away half the time, hand unconsciously clenching tightly around Judai's, but Judai didn't say a single word about it and simply stayed next to him as support, watching the videos closely; there was so much destruction of the track that he wasn't even sure how he was still navigating it, but Yusei was Yusei and apparently god-like at maneuvering his bike - the shit he pulled while somehow not crashing and dying was literally insane and if Judai's already massive respect for his driving skills skyrocketed even higher.

Yusei was not kidding when he said he was a daredevil, not at _all_. Judai would swear by it until the day he died, Yusei was an absolute _bad-ass_.

"...So, that's two comparison wins for me and zero for you," Judai teased, making sure to take extra time reading the next plaque they stopped at but also being unable to resist the need to tease his boyfriend.

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him, a determined glint in his eyes, "I'll find something, we've only just started after all."


	316. Jellyfish Room

_**11/12/19**_

They slowly made their way around the indoor sections of the aquarium, deciding to leave all the outer parts to explore after so that they could stop for lunch and re-energize before going out in the sun for a while - granted, there was plenty of shade provided and it wasn't exactly a hot day at all, but the sun was still out and that could tire a person out if they weren't careful. And so, it was reserved for the second half of the day and after lunch so that if they got tired after and were ready to just leave and go home, then they could without feeling bad about missing the rest of the place.

As it was, everything was really interesting to see and look at, but the most notable part so far was when they were in an area about tide pools. It had a simulated system set up inside where very strong waves were constantly moving back and forth inside, while all the sea creatures just happily went about their lives at the bottom, and Yusei's reaction to it was (in Judai's opinion) adorable - he was all over reading all the plaques to see how the hell they could live in such conditions and was even more invested, hilariously enough, when he realized there were a couple crabs floating along with the waves in there as well. Personally, Judai was getting a few flashbacks to this one time in the spirit world where he had to navigate a massive storm in the middle of the ocean and had more than his fair share of waves collapse on top of him to throw him around, so he was actually invested in learning about it as well.

If they could stick to the surface or float around to their desires, then he could probably find a way to mimic it, or at least find inspiration from them to figure out his own way of doing so, by using his powers.

Hence, that was probably the biggest highlight in the day thus far for both of them after the penguins, of course. They were almost done with the indoor section and only had one left to go, whose entrance faded into an area with very little light since it was about creatures who tended to dwell deeper into the ocean.

"Ooh, it's dark here - don't worry, I'll hold your hand," Judai joked, grinning at the amused, but highly exasperated look Yusei gave him in return.

"We've been holding hands this entire time, but yes, _thank you_ ," Yusei replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes with a smile, "What would I ever do if I had to walk into this dark abyss without you?"

"You'd be stuck in it forever, just reading all the plaques and watching the animals."

Yusei let out a little laugh at that one, knowing that it was true to an extent - Judai had already had to snap him out of that research daze a couple times so that they could make sure they still had time later, but it was with the promise that if he still wanted to come back to it later at the end then they would. He didn't mind coming back to anything since Judai could just wander and have fun watching the various animals again while Yusei did his own thing.

In the beginning there were a bunch of exhibits regarding tinier animals that tended to live in the sand, like hermit crabs and, to Judai's delight, little tiny shrimp-like fish that kept burrowing and swimming back out only to burrow into the sand again. As for the hermit crabs, Judai was absolutely convinced that one of the ones that were out of its shell was waving at him for a little bit.

"Look at that, they're for sure doing a little wave," Judai said before noticing that the crab he'd been pointing at stopped and was starting to retreat back into their home, "Aw no, don't go into your shell, come on..."

"Maybe they got tired of waving at you, their arms aren't exactly tiny compared to the rest of their body," Yusei suggested, playing along and patting him on the head lightly in mock reassurance, " _Or_... they just didn't like you because you didn't wave back."

Judai let out an exaggerated gasp of shock, stating, "You're right, I didn't! No wonder, they probably thought I was a very, very rude human, how dare I do such a thing!"

They both snickered when they caught each other's eyes before moving onward into the next room, which as Judai would soon come to learn, would become Yusei's favorite part of the aquarium.

"Oh sweet, look at all the jellyfish dude," Judai said, face lighting up at the sight of various windows in the wall whose lighting occasionally changed to show off said different types of jellyfish in different ways, "Aren't they pretty? I like 'em 'cause they're pretty but can also be super deadly if they sting you - trust me, you do _not_ want a jellyfish to sting you."

"Jellyfish can sting?" Yusei blinked, letting Judai pull him over to the first set of windows that caught his interest, "So that's how they protect themselves... I've only seen them a few times in the water between Satellite and the city since the waters got cleaned up a lot, and I was curious how they could survive while being so paper-thin."

"Yup, cool right?" Judai grinned, attention drifting away from the very frilly jellyfish in front of them when the lights turned off in a nearby tank window and dozens of outlines suddenly became visible, "Ooh, they have those ones here! I like these little dudes, I never knew what they were called though. Let's see, moon jellyfish?"

"Makes sense, the little rings on their heads look like very bent crescent moons, plus they're lit up in the same color that the moon is at night," Yusei said, watching alongside him as both of them became slightly entranced by all the tiny creatures moving around in the space to basically create a light show. The lights popped back on inside a couple minutes later, immediately making all the jellyfish inside turn practically invisible to them, so they moved on to the next window for now.

About halfway through the room Yusei let out a quiet hum of thought, prompting Judai to stop and wait for him to talk while they looked up at a cylindrical tank next to them that had a couple of the bigger jellyfish inside. He knew it was going to be good, though, when Yusei's face suddenly lit up with a smirk.

"Judai, I figured it out," Yusei stated, looking immensely proud of himself, "Your hair looks like a jellyfish."

Judai gaped in response, not having expected that of all things and slowly letting the shock turn to disbelief as he realized that yes, his hair could indeed resemble a jellyfish thanks to its shape.

"...Holy shit, you're right," Judai admitted, hands coming up to hold his hair as he stared up at Yusei with wide eyes, "You goddamn genius, fine - you win this time. I honestly didn't think you'd find something but I was clearly wrong, I've been bested."

"Told you I'd find something, Mr. Fluffy Jellyfish Hair."

"Please Yusei, I'm begging you - do not make that a thing."

"...We'll see," Yusei replied, smirk growing wider as he leaned down to give him a quick peck on the top of his head when he whimpered slightly and pouted.


	317. Seal Exhibit

_**11/13/19**_

Outside, they got to see all the animals they'd seen inside in the water, but this time they were out on land and doing their own thing. Judai was quick to make a few more jokes about the penguins when they ended up seeing them first again, but didn't stay too long doing it as only one or two were actually out of the water right now.

Yusei found himself really liking the seals next, though. He'd never gotten a close look at them, and they'd timed it once again on accident where they got there right when the caretakers fed them, so they were active and out doing tricks both in and out of the water for everyone to see in order to get food. They were just so... squishy looking? Like pillows, and they just looked so _happy_.

"You like seals, huh?" Judai noted a while after, seeing as they were still sitting in the little viewing area for that part of the exhibit - it was shaded and the show had ended a few minutes ago so lots of people had cleared out, but Yusei had really wanted to watch them interact with each other more and waddle around on land after jumping out of the water.

Yusei tore his gaze off the two seals currently flopping around and looking incredibly happy, giving Judai a sheepish smile, "I guess I do. I've never seen them so close before, just far out in the water - I never realized just how... big they are."

"Yeah, they're pretty cute with all that blubber, aren't they?" Judai agreed, hitting the nail on the head pretty easily and causing him to smile even wider in sheepishness, "Aw come on, don't be embarrassed. Honestly, that fat of theirs is the breaking point for whether a person loves seals or hates them."

"I don't see how anyone could hate such a happy looking animal."

"I'm sure plenty of them have legitimate reasons, but you know as well as I do that some people just suck."

"True enough..."

They stayed a little while longer until both of the seals that were still up on land decided they wanted to go swim around in the water to play, which effectively made the exhibit pretty much empty. Thus they moved on, looking at a few other animals until they finally got to one specific area that had Judai lighting up with a grin, which meant that whatever this was would be either awesome or make Yusei want to hold his head and sigh in exasperation.

"Ooh, we finally found it!" Judai cheered, pulling him over eagerly and tapping at his hand quickly once they were next to the edge of the raised pool of shallow water, "Yusei, take off your glove for this - it's time to pet sting rays!~"

Sure enough, a quick glance at the pool revealed that there were several sting rays swimming around the edge next to the wall, bodies waving in ripples as they went. There were a few other people there, all sticking their hands into the water and carefully running two fingers along the backs of the sting rays as they went by.

 _Well, it seems safe enough_ , Yusei mused, doing as Judai asked and tugging his glove off as he continued to observe the rays with interest, _They wouldn't have it here if it wasn't, at least._

Besides, he didn't call himself a daredevil for nothing - he had a reputation to keep here and doing this was hardly nerve-wracking to him; it was just a bit odd to him that anyone had looked at a sting ray, known how badly they could get injured by their stingers, and thought 'Hey! Let's pet it!' like it was perfectly safe and normal to pet a wild animal.

"Here, I'll do it first. You just do it nice and soft, barely skimming the back in the middle with two fingers," Judai explained, waiting for a ray to come around and pass in front of him before reaching in and doing just that. He turned to him with an encouraging smile after, shaking his hand off a little bit as he continued, "See, easy as that!"

Yusei hummed with a slight shrug before doing it himself, seeing that a ray was about to pass by again, and startled just a little bit at the feel, "They're... oddly soft but slimy. I thought it'd be rough or something."

"I thought that the first time too, but nope! Kinda cool, isn't it?" Judai agreed, reaching back in again next to him as they both pet the next one that came by. They shared a look and chuckled quietly with each other, doing it a few more times before finally having enough of it and going to wash their hands at the nearby sinks.

"I'm still curious as to why anyone would think to pet a sting ray, but it was fun," Yusei said, grinning when he accidentally flicked a little water and soap at Judai and got a playful glare in return, "Oops."

"It's like you want a repeat of that one time we did the dishes together and I let you wash them instead of drying them," Judai stated, raising an eyebrow at him, "My poor kitchen was water-logged."

"I'm not the one who took a handful of water and chucked it at me," Yusei defended, drying his hands and making sure _not_ to get Judai with any water droplets in the process.

"You started it by flicking water at me."

"Touche."

There wasn't actually much left for them to see after that, so thirty minutes later they found themselves back at the beginning, deciding to forgo re-visiting anywhere and just head home. They had to stop and check out the shop first though, of course, since it just wouldn't be a complete outing if they didn't find something to commemorate Yusei's first time going to the aquarium.

Judai's words, not his, but Yusei was quite happy when they both saw the massive harp seal plush that was pretty much a body pillow at that point and Judai didn't even have to ask to pick it up and bring it to the register to check out.


	318. Pocky Day

**_11/14/19_**

"Oh Yusei!~" Judai called out, letting the door shut lightly behind him as he walked in, "I'm back! I've got somethin' for ya, too."

"Welcome home... and what'd you get?" Yusei greeted, looking up from where he was quite comfortably settled into the couch - he had the seal in front of him and was hugging it while being nestled in blankets and scrolling on his tablet, watching some new tech reveal videos he hadn't had the time to watch until then. It'd decided to rain that day so it was relatively cold in the house, which was why he was there in the first place.

He would've preferred to be in bed, to be honest, but he couldn't be bothered to move after Judai'd basically wrapped him up in a blanket burrito and sat him on the couch to hang-out and relax while he went out to a meeting for work (Phoenix had been nice enough to send someone to pick him up because of the rain, so that was good). That'd been a few hours ago, and he was especially warm now even if he'd been forced to let the blankets fall off a little bit so that he could free his arms and watch his videos, so he really didn't want to move.

"A classic snack that I think you'll enjoy," Judai replied, humming and smiling excitedly in such a way that Yusei could already tell he was up to something. However, it seemed like it wouldn't end up too bad for either of them based off how he was acting, so at least he had that going for him.

Before that though, Yusei had the bright idea to capitalize on being lazy for once, so he held up a hand to get his attention, "First, though, you want to carry me upstairs? It's warm and I don't want to move, but I'd rather be in bed now that you're back."

"What, you saying I take up a lot of room?" Judai teased, complying right away though and lifting him up, blankets, seal and all with no hesitation, "I don't mind, though. The bed sounds comfy and you're being dangerously cute right now."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Yusei sighed, holding on as best he could with his arms full - all he really could do was lean his weight towards Judai, though, so that's what he did. At least he didn't have to worry about Judai dropping him on accident.

"It means that those glasses, you, and that seal are a deadly combination," Judai stated, carefully dropping him on the bed before sitting down next to him and taking his bag off his back, "I'm gonna die of cuteness if you keep this up, dear."

" _Ha ha_ ," Yusei laughed sarcastically, readjusting himself and scooting back to lie down and rest his head on the pillows, "Anyway, what'd you get?"

Judai dug through his bag until he found what he was looking for, holding it up to him with a wide grin, "Pocky! Basically, it's thin bread sticks that've been dipped in chocolate."

"I've seen those around a lot, but I never actually tried them," Yusei admitted, sitting up and letting the blankets loosen significantly enough that he could move however he wanted now that he was interested, "I meant to though... just always forgot or was busy when I remembered them though."

"Well, now you get to try them," Judai said, holding out the box for him to take one now that he'd opened it, "Each one's got a little uncovered portion at the end for you to hold it at so you don't get chocolate on your fingers, but it's more useful if it's hot and the chocolate is melt-y."

"Smart design choice," Yusei replied, taking a bit off the stick with a satisfying little 'snap' sound, "Tastes good, too. I can see why it's considered a classic."

"There's a game called the Pocky Game, too, though I doubt you've heard of it," Judai started, going on to explain, "It's kinda the main reason I got them, 'cause we can actually play it together... basically, each person puts one end of a Pocky stick in their mouth and sees who can eat it the fastest."

Yusei stared blankly at him for a moment before raising an eyebrow, "Doesn't that just result in a kiss?"

"Yup! That's the Pocky Game for you. Now, you, me, let's play _right now,_ " Judai replied unashamedly, pulling out another stick from the box and popping one end into his mouth, afterwards gesturing for him to come over with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Y'know what? Okay, but I'm definitely going to eat more of it than you," Yusei challenged, finding the whole idea a little ridiculous but still appreciating the novelty of it and perfectly willing to participate in anything where he'd get to kiss Judai; if he could win at something too against him, then that was even better, even if it was at something like this.

It was... a little more embarrassing in that first moment than he thought it would be when he put the other end in his mouth, what with the anticipation and being so close to each other, but it went away pretty quickly once they finally started the game. Judai practically snapped off his half of the stick somehow in one go, rushing in before he could do anything and stealing part of the remaining bit, pressing their lips together firmly in the process.

They let it get a little deeper, tongues flicking out every once in a while to tease the other by brushing against their lip, before finally pulling apart. For a few seconds they simply stared at each other before they both grinned and broke out into laughter.

"I win!" Judai cheered, letting out a little yelp when Yusei pulled him forward and off-balance in the process while snatching the box out of his hands.

"I wasn't ready, this time I'll beat you," Yusei huffed, pulling out another stick determinedly, "We go right when I take my hand off it, got it?"

"Oh ho, sure, I'm still gonna win though," Judai retorted, resting his hands on his knees and leaning in close, "This game is too fun to lose, and I've got a bunch more where that came from so we can play as much as we want to."

Yusei couldn't help but let out a little 'pft' sound, which Judai was quick to take advantage of and start the game, both of them breaking out into even more laughter afterwards - they had a fun afternoon just laughing at the silliness of it while still thoroughly enjoying quite a few kisses.

Neither of them could agree on who won the most, though, because they'd lost track somewhere in the middle.


	319. One Last Tournament

**_11/15/19_**

"I should probably find another tournament to duel in before the end of the year, huh?" Judai mused, stretching as he stood up from the couch to take a break from drawing. Yusei was assigned another project recently, so he was, of course, busy doing his best to knock as much of it out of the way as he possibly could - in other words, he was on campus right now and currently using the science labs to get as much of the physical testing out of the way as possible. He could do the calculations all at home, but he needed to do the actual experiment first.

"That's probably a good idea. Is there rank decay at all?" Yubel asked, popping out in spirit form for once and stretching as well since it'd been a while. She usually came out with Haou whenever they went to their dimension, which Judai was very glad they _could_ do since it always left everyone in a good mood (spending so much time stuck together was both a blessing and a curse sometimes), but not so much otherwise.

"I dunno, but it'd definitely explain why some pros duel literally every single time there's a tournament they can enter if there was rank decay," Judai replied, shrugging right afterwards and making his way towards the kitchen to get some food since he'd noticed he was hungry, "Though even if there was rank decay, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm mostly just dueling for fun, the prize money and other stuff is just a bonus."

"Bet you'd piss off a lot of them if you said that to them," Yubel snickered, laughing more when Judai pouted at her, "It just means you're much better than them in that way."

"C'mon, you know I don't like saying I'm better than people like that..." Judai sighed exasperatedly, knowing that it would fall on deaf ears just like the last twenty times he'd said it. Sure, it gave him some validation, but he always just felt weird and awkward if he tried to think of himself as 'better' than someone else, in a prideful way and not one that was simple, like 'I'm better at drawing' or 'I'm better at cooking'.

" _It's true, though_ ," Haou chipped in, which was what made the whole thing even worse - Haou was of the same idea, but more-so in a 'My descendant, reincarnation, whatever-he-is will obviously be better than everyone else around him' type of way. Granted, he'd cooled down significantly since the beginning and only really brought it up when it was appropriate, but it was still something he did with Yubel when he could.

A meow caught his attention and Judai paused, carefully setting the plate he'd been grabbing down and smiling at the sight of Pharaoh meowing at Yubel. The cat liked Yubel quite a bit and would always do his best to hang out around her if she was out, especially considering how rare of an occasion that could be. Yubel would never say 'no' to him either, so Judai watched as she leaned down and held out her hand, not actually able to touch the cat but having him rub up against her hand like he could anyways.

"I swear, this cat likes the weirdest things," Yubel stated, doing her best to sound annoyed by it but failing completely thanks to the fanged grin on her face.

"Well, he does like spirits and duel energy," Judai retorted, going back to getting food for himself - he wasn't expecting Yusei home for another three hours or so, and it'd already been three. He was hungry and hadn't eaten since that morning at breakfast, and one quick look at the fridge told him that he'd be warming up some left-over stir fry he'd made for dinner last night.

It didn't take long for him to reheat a plate of the noodles and veggies, though before he left the kitchen he dug into the cabinet and got out a few of Pharaoh's treats. The cat was quite happy about that and snatched them the second he was able to, letting him pet him for a bit while he ate the treats. Of course, right afterwards Pharaoh went right up and out the window, clearly wanting more treats or something like that, so Judai just let out a chuckle - Pharaoh would _never_ miss dinner, after all, even if he were in the middle of getting tons of snacks or a similar scenario.

"Alright, time to sort through all these then," Judai said, pulling out his phone and unlocking it, pulling up the tournament list website before starting to scroll with one hand and eat with the other. There were a few interesting ones, though none of them had the 'Pro' tag on them, so they wouldn't really be counting for his rank much, but eventually he did manage to find one that had the tag on it and looked promising.

"'The Official Winter Wonderland Tournament'...? Pros will duel for the grand prize in the Kaiba Stadium, which has been completely decorated from the ground up to be a winter wonderland," Judai read out loud, looking to Yubel for her input - it sounded fun to him, at least, and he popped open more details about it to read over.

"I'd love to be summoned and then bring fire to it," Yubel cackled, approval sparking across the connection before she calmed down, "Anyway, I'm going to go back. Don't forget to tell Yusei when he comes back, otherwise you won't remember until the day of."

"Yeah yeah, I got it," Judai grinned, rolling his eyes slightly but setting a quick reminder on his phone anyway just in case. Going back to reading the tournament details, it seemed to be another where costumes were allowed and encouraged, so he got to work sketching out as many ideas as he could.

 _Winter wonderland, huh?_ Judai thought to himself, trying to figure out a few initial ideas to get himself started, _So... snowflakes? Definitely blue and white colors, maybe pink and purple depending on what I go with because of fairies and stuff..._

" _...Be a king_ ," Haou suggested, surprising Judai a bit since he hadn't expected him to help but he was thrilled with the suggestion anyway.

"Ooh, that's a good one. Thanks!"

...Maybe if he dressed himself up regally enough, he could fluster Yusei again somehow. It was a nice thought and suddenly, Judai was ten times more motivated to make this work.


	320. Caught Asleep

_**11/16/19**_

The sound of the door opening roused Judai slightly, his head shooting up after a few seconds upon realizing that he'd been asleep - luckily he managed to catch the sketchbook and pencil he'd accidentally thrown off himself in the process, so none of the pages got bent and the pencil was saved.

"I'm home," Yusei said, kicking off his boots after taking a moment to close the door and take a good look at Judai, who was currently in the middle of letting out a huge yawn after safely putting his stuff on the coffee table and stretching, "Sorry, did I wake you up?"

"Yeah, but I didn't mean to fall asleep in the first place," Judai laughed sheepishly, smiling fondly when Yusei walked over and flopped onto the couch right next to him, "How'd it go? You get as much done as you wanted to?"

"Yeah, plus some extra - the results were better than I'd initially hoped they'd be considering some of the equipment, so I was able to breeze through some of the calculations while I waited for things to start working," Yusei replied, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him back to lie down on top of him, "I'm tired now though and I just wanna hug my living heater."

"Well, that can definitely be arranged - if you're not hungry, that is," Judai grinned, hearing the other's stomach growl lowly at the mention of food, "Food comes first, and knowing you, you skipped lunch."

"...Oops?" Yusei said, smiling sheepishly at him and letting him get up and off him so they could both go to the kitchen, "I guess I should've brought one... but then again I can't bring food into the lab and I basically didn't leave it at all today."

"Guess that just means I'll have to give you some extra to make up for it," Judai sighed, pulling open the freezer to find the stuff he'd made earlier that morning and stuck inside to freeze for later, "You don't mind having to wait, right? I gotta let the oven heat up, but once that's done it'll only take an extra ten minutes or so for these to cook."

"I don't mind, good food's worth waiting for," Yusei shrugged, digging through the cabinets and pulling out two mugs, "Let's make tea in the meantime, though. Where'd you put the stuff from the gardens?"

"Ooh, that stuff? I think I put it in that drawer over there," Judai said, pointing in the correct direction with one hand while he poked in the correct temperature on the oven with the other. A quick check to make sure the correct pan was inside the oven already to heat up with it was made, and he hummed when he found that it was.

Yusei playfully bumped into his side to get him to move out of the way so he could get to the stove, exchanging grins when Judai bumped him back before actually moving. The tea kettle was put on the stove, and now all they had to do was wait for it to screech at them that it was ready.

"We're starting to run low on leaves," Yusei noted, holding up the little clear box they'd sorted them into for him to see - it was under the half-way point, practically at the quarter-mark, "Is this the one Aleister gave us or one of the others?"

"Eh... It's one of the others," Judai replied after a short moment of staring at the leaves that were left to get a sense of what they looked like, "This one's one of the fruity ones, so it makes sense. I tend to brew them more than the rest because they don't have any caffeine or the like in them, so they're better for relaxing." He looked up at Yusei with a cheeky grin, proclaiming, "Guess we'll just have to make another visit, then! Maybe find some new ones to try, maybe have another little tea party for ourselves."

"That sounds nice, it _was_ fun doing that" Yusei smiled, capping the leaves and putting them back in the drawer where they belonged before wrapping an arm around his shoulder and pulling him gently back outside the kitchen, "Now, back to the couch. Hopefully if we somehow fall asleep before the water finishes boiling, the whistle will wake us up."

"Yusei, I _highly_ doubt either of us would be able to sleep through that thing. It's loud as hell."

"There's a first time for everything... like me coming back to you actually asleep on the couch for once. That's a new one."

Judai pouted at him as they both got settled into the couch, not lying down though since Judai had spotted his sketchbook and remembered just why he was drawing in the first place. He let Yusei hug him from behind while he popped open the book and flipped through until he found his most recent additions, leaning his head against the other's before explaining.

"So I signed up for one more tournament for the year - figured it'd be a good idea and all, since I'm in the pro leagues now," Judai stated, closing his eyes for a bit to enjoy the hug he'd been missing all day while he talked, "It's in early December, so it's not _too_ far out, but it's also gonna be completely decorated for winter and the duelists are encouraged to wear costumes. So, I've been trying to come up with ideas - tell me what you think of them?"

"Of course," Yusei replied, smile in his voice as he tilted his head a bit to kiss him on the cheek, "Just tell me what you're going for and I'll do my best to tell you what's good."


	321. Work Diversion

_**11/17/19**_

Yusei was _trying_ to get his calculations done the next day, but the key word here was 'try' - he didn't have too much to do and it should've only taken him roughly two hours to complete, but a certain someone had way too much energy for some reason and couldn't resist bugging him.

Over. And over. And over.

It'd only been an hour and he already knew that he would not be finishing this project within those estimated two hours.

"Yusei..."

Poke.

"Yusei~"

Another poke.

"Yu-sei~"

A weight on the back of his chair, tilting him back ever-so-slightly.

"My lovely gear-head!~" Judai cheered this time, finally making it so he couldn't ignore him any longer this go-around by doing something he hadn't done last time, which was hugging him from behind and resting his head on the top of his head with a happy hum.

With a sigh of defeat, Yusei shoved the laptop slightly away and out of reach, leaning back into the hug and tilting his head up in response, "Fine, you win - what is it, Judai?"

Judai's chuckle sound far too prideful at his success as he let go so he could spin Yusei around to face him, sending him a beaming smile that was hiding a little bit of mischievous at the edges of it and saying, "I'm bored, wanna go flying in my realm again?"

"This couldn't have waited until _after_ I was done?" Yusei asked somewhat rhetorically, already knowing the answer to it since Judai clearly had some pent-up energy to get out.

"Like I said, I'm bored and I wanna hang out with you," Judai replied, suddenly brightening as some sort of idea entered his head, "Oh! We could stop by the Aromage's shop first, see if there's anything interesting, get some more fun stuff to play around with."

"I'm fine with all this, but what's gotten into you this morning?" Yusei wondered, a little worried about how... hyper? Not quite hyper, but super energetic Judai was acting - it wasn't exactly normal, in fact he hadn't ever seen him reach this level of energy before where he'd completely disregard the fact that he was working in favor of getting his attention, so he had grounds to be worried about him.

"I dunno, but I just... feel like I need to move," Judai paused, looking up in thought and falling silent with a slightly unfocused gaze that Yusei had come to recognize as when he was talking to Yubel and Haou, "Hmm... maybe... wait, breakfast? It was the breakfast apparently?"

"...Should I be worried about myself...?"

"No no, they're saying that it's one of the vegetables I used that was from the spirit dimension - apparently it's often used in energy boosting foods, and even made into drinks for a kind of duel monster energy drink," Judai assured him, laughing a bit sheepishly and latching him into a hug, "Basically, it only effects me because I'm part duel monster. You and the other two wouldn't be affected at all."

"Good to know, though to be honest I wish it would have an effect on me... imagine making lunches with it, it'd be an instant energy boost considering the effect it's having on you right now," Yusei mused, closing one eye when Judai started to smush and rub their faces together, noting, "You're awfully affectionate when you're like this... I half expect to look at you and see those fox ears and tail."

"Hey, I'm always this affectionate!" Judai retorted, using a hand to smush his other cheek as well in mock disappointment, "Just not physically, I suppose."

Once Yusei finally managed to free his face from any more squishing, he let out a little laugh and stated, "Weren't we supposed to go flying? What are we waiting for?"

He grinned at the pout Judai gave him in response, "Yusei, that's not fair!~ You're the one who brought up the other stuff and distracted me in the first place."

"You could've simply ignored it and dragged me into a portal, y'know."

"That'd be mean though, I don't wanna be mean to my boyfriend who I love _very_ dearly."

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him, feeling vaguely like this was leading up to something else that Judai had to have planned, asking, "I can't tell if you're just being a sap again or if you're trying to butter me up for something."

Judai paused for just ever-so-slightly too long before answering, which honestly told Yusei all he needed to know, "I would never do such a thing - let's go though, before we get distracted again."

Yusei eventually figured out what it was he wanted though when he got eagerly pushed through the castle later towards their room and had puppy eyes turned on him - needless to say, those puppy eyes were a very necessary tool Judai had to wield to convince him it was a good idea, mainly because Yusei knew just what he would be in for considering just how high energy Judai was that day; it was a very _pleasant_ rest of the afternoon though, followed by a very relaxing evening where they just napped and cuddled as recovery.


	322. Incoming Weather

_**11/18/19**_

"I thought I heard someone get up," Judai grinned, entering the kitchen with a yawn, "Didn't expect it to be both of you though."

"Well, it has been the norm recently..." Crow sighed, pausing for a moment to yawn as well after seeing Judai enter, "Damn it, don't you know those things are infectious?"

Judai laughed, immediately going for the refrigerator to get a cold drink to wake himself up with, "My bad, my bad. Glad the whole 'leftovers for breakfast' thing has been working out for you two, though."

"Food is food," Jack huffed, though this was also right before he took a huge bite of his slice of quiche while pointedly not looking at either of them, "Thanks for it, though."

As everyone seemed to suddenly realize that December was creeping up on them, which also meant Christmas and shopping for presents, they'd started taking more hours and starting earlier in the day - 'they' being Crow and Jack, of course, since both Judai and Yusei had way too much money saved up to notice a dent in their wallets. The other two admittedly did as well, but they were the ones with the more conventional, week-based salaries that weren't randomly spread out like Judai's, so they pretty much figured it couldn't hurt and it would only be for a couple weeks, anyway.

Once Judai had heard what they were doing though, he made sure he focused on making foods for breakfast that were made in big batches, like quiches, certain types of bread, pies, etc. so that if he and Yusei weren't awake still by the time they left they could still get some good food to start the day off. It was giving him practice with a lot recipes he hadn't tried in a while, so he didn't mind at all and it was actually rather nice to not have to cook in the mornings half the time for once.

"On another note, have you seen the weather forecast for next week?" Crow asked, sounding relatively excited as he immediately continued, "If it all stays the same, then it's gonna start snowing."

Judai paused from where he was gulping down a glass of water, turning to look at them with a grin, "No, I had not looked, but do you know what that means?"

All three of them stared at each other with varying levels of smiles, but very equally high levels of determination to win.

"It's finally time for a rematch," Crow replied, pointing his fork between both of them with a smirk, "You're both going down, and so is Yusei!"

"Excuse me? I'm clearly going to trounce all of you, I've gotten in a lot better shape since the beginning of the year," Jack retorted, giving him a competitive glare and pointing his fork right back at him as well, "None of you stand a chance before the King!"

Before Judai could chip in though, both Jack and Crow turned their attention to him, Jack stating very clearly, "And you! No cheating with magic powers, got it?"

"Ah... well, I was going to suggest that I could materialize a bunch of our partners to make it more fun this time around," Judai sighed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly but with a knowing smirk, "But... I suppose if I can't use-"

"On second thought, cheat all you want - we'll all have cheats at that point if we've got our duel monsters with us," Crow said, Judai letting out a bark of laughter at the truth of the statement, "Yusei can help out with that too then, I guess. Speaking of which, where is he? Still asleep?"

"Yeah, he's still asleep," Judai confirmed, chugging back the rest of the water and putting it in the sink before grabbing the tea kettle and getting all the stuff he needed to make tea - it was a cold morning and the cold water had only been to help his throat since it was dry, plus it helped him wake up more, "I kinda kept dragging him away from finishing a project of his for class and felt bad, so I didn't bug him about staying up late to finally finish it."

"I'm still not used to the idea of him going to school," Crow admitted, getting a nod of agreement from Jack, "It's such an odd concept to me. Yusei and school?"

"Well, to be fair he's not really doing much but brushing up on stuff he hasn't had to use in a while," Judai shrugged, seeing where they were coming from, "He's just thinking of it as a vacation pretty much, so I say good for him considering it's a pretty weird concept for him, too." With a legitimate genius like Yusei, who was pretty much top of his field in terms of knowledge and application, it was weird to think of him having to go... well, not _back_ to school since he never went in the first place, but the general idea was there.

"Anyway," he continued, leaning casually on the back of a chair across from them now that the tea kettle had been put on the stove to heat up, "we're _totally_ going to destroy you guys in the Great Snow War two-point-oh."

He was met with quite a bit of protest, and they spent the rest of breakfast simply challenging each other and trying to one-up one another to see who could have the best declaration of war.


	323. Rain Before Snow

_**11/19/19**_

The rain decided to pick up during the week leading up to when it was supposed to snow, screwing up their usual plans of going and exercising in the morning - to make up for it, though, they decided to just grab an umbrella and take a walk, enjoying the fresh, crisp smell of the rain and the sight of the city lit up around them.

"Been a while since the last time it rained without it turning into a storm," Judai noted, huddling close to Yusei and hugging his arm. Yusei got to hold the umbrella since he was the taller one, but luckily it was one of the really nice, big ones so there was no worry about him holding it too high on accident and letting the rain hit him.

"It has been, hasn't it?" Yusei mused, "I hadn't thought about it before, but there's been a lot of storms..."

"Eh, it's just weather being weather," Judai shrugged, looking up at him with a quirked grin, "Can never make up its mind on what it wants to be, but at least whatever phase it was going through seems to have passed."

"'Phase', he says," Yusei snorted, raising an eyebrow down at him that Judai was quick to refute.

"Hey, you can't tell me that the weather isn't like some teenager that's always going through phases! It's very true, just think about it."

"Trust me, I get it, but still - _phases_."

"Okay, to be fair I've met my fair share of duel monsters who could influence the weather and acted just like that, so I may be slightly biased," Judai admitted, get a hum of sudden understanding in return.

"Ah, now that makes more sense," Yusei chuckled, leaning down and pressing a quick kiss to the top of his head. He somehow freed his arm from Judai's grip on it for a moment, wrapping it around his shoulders instead and tugging him closer.

Judai wasn't going to complain about that at all though and simply got used to the new position, more focused on the rain and the city than worrying about however Yusei wanted to walk or keep him close (thought admittedly, he probably should've paid a little more attention to it if only to more fully appreciate the warmth they gave each other). Before they'd left, they'd grabbed two to-go bottles and added fresh coffee and creamer to them - one was put on the side pocket of the bag they brought along, while Judai held the other in the hand that wasn't busy either hugging Yusei or getting squished into his side by him.

The warm liquid as he drank was a stark contrast to the temperature outside, and Judai hummed happily at the feeling of it - it really felt like it was winter coming up, something he'd been excited for for ages after the scorching hot summer they'd had. He had to physically stop himself from stomping in a puddle with two feet at full strength as they walked along the sidewalks, reminding himself that it probably wouldn't be the best idea to risk Yusei getting sick again from the weather.

He really didn't want to have a sick Yusei on his hands again... it was still fresh in his mind how oddly and sweetly Yusei had acted, solely for the chance at getting his laptop to use and never relinquish control of again, so he definitely was trying to actively avoid the possibility of having those puppy eyes be mercilessly turned on him.

"If you want to jump, go ahead," Yusei said, clearly noticing the twitch he'd given towards a couple of puddles that they'd passed at this point and giving him an exasperated smile, "A little water isn't going to kill anyone, Judai. It's the time when we're in the rain without an umbrella and without enough layers that we'll have to worry."

Judai gave him a sheepish grin in return but beamed soon after when he nodded, spotted the next puddle, and let go in order to run towards it and minimize the amount of splash that would get on Yusei, just in case. It was way too satisfying to hear that splash noise of the water splattering up and away and he found himself doing it again the second another puddle walked into range.

"Wanna go to the park? We could still do laps, just walk them instead," Judai asked, laughing a little to himself when he found another puddle to stomp on before exchanging smiles with Yusei, "Plus, there's that one dip in the sidewalk near the exercise machines and I'm _way_ too curious about whether or not there's a huge puddle there."

"Sounds good to me, let's check it out," Yusei said, agreeing easily but pulling him back into his side teasingly once he'd wandered off and defeated another puddle, "I need my heater to stay closer to me, though - please?"

"Only if _you_ go and stomp on the next few puddles. You remember how fun it is, right?" Judai grinned, not minding the little bit of rain that came with urging Yusei forward (which meant the umbrella went with him, too), "Let me see this splash, dear."

Judai couldn't even find ability to be mad at all when Yusei stomped and somehow made some of the water splash above Judai's waist - it's not like he wasn't already a little wet from just walking in the rain, plus he'd run out from under the umbrella for a few seconds in order to have his fun as well earlier. They paused and stared at each other before breaking out into laughter, coming back together without a second thought with Judai hugging Yusei's arm again and leaning his head on his shoulder as they kept walking and enjoying the morning.

When Judai did eventually find that dip he'd been talking about though, and discovered that it was less like a big puddle and more like a small pond in the making, he made absolutely sure Yusei was far enough back before proceeding to play hopscotch in it; it completely soaked the bottom half of his pants as a result, but it was _so_ worth it (plus all it took was a few creative card uses to dry them quickly).


	324. Winter Attire

_**11/20/19**_

Judai came to one very important realization thanks to the continuously dropping temperatures outside, and that was that they didn't have much in terms of winter attire - sure, they had their heavy winter coats, but that was just about it. No scarves, no gloves (Yusei had tried to say his usual leather gloves were viable winter gloves, to which Judai responded with a deadpan look of judgement), they owned none of the usual winter stuff and desperately needed it.

...Well, Judai thought they desperately needed it, at least. Yusei seemed to be significantly more immune to the cold and he was a little jealous of that fact, especially when his neck was freezing, his fingers were freezing, his nose was _freezing_... literally every part of him was starting to feel frozen and he hated it.

Either way though, he was quick to acquire the proper clothing and accessories for winter weather, happily wearing at least his scarf around his neck everywhere he went so that he could both keep his neck warm and cover his nose with it to warm it up if he needed to. He'd gotten Yusei a navy one to go with his maroon version, which both happened to match with the colors of their respective winter coats, but Yusei wasn't exactly used to having anything around his neck thanks to all the low-cut shirts he wore so he didn't wear his nearly as often; he'd fiddled with it a lot when he first started wearing it, but at least now he seemed to be more used to it.

In addition to the new clothing, Judai also made the executive decision to buy blankets to keep downstairs on the couch, and he was honestly starting to believe that it was one of his best decisions thus far - cuddling on the couch became much more viable an activity to do and was great for warming up quickly thanks to it, much like what they were doing now.

"I love this cold, don't get me wrong, but damn is it _cold_ ," Judai sighed, blanket draped over both him and Yusei, his legs thrown over the other's lap while he used the other's shoulders as a head rest. They just gotten back from making a quick run to the grocery store, something that didn't take very long but still required all the usually piling on of gear and layers, and were currently enjoying defrosting after stripping themselves of layers of clothing like an onion after getting home. One major difference, though, was that Judai was still clinging onto his new, fluffy scarf like a lifeline no matter what he was doing, so that _wasn't_ removed along with everything else - his neck and nose were just too prone to freezing for him to want to take off his scarf at all, so far.

In fact, he pulled his scarf up to cover his nose as he curled up under the blanket and leaned more on Yusei, breathing out happily when he felt the heat start to prickle away at the cold appendage. He'd gladly let the tea he'd made turn cold in a mug that was two feet away from him too if it meant that he'd stay fully warm and comfy under a blanket with his boyfriend.

"I still say it's not _that_ weird for you to feel so cold considering your average body temperature," Yusei stated, smiling down at him and raising an eyebrow in curiosity, "You know that the higher one's body temperature is, the colder they'll feel, right? Taking into account the wind blowing outside, plus the continuously dropping, freezing weather, _and_ the fact that you've got an above average body temperature... I'd be more worried if you said you weren't freezing, to be honest."

"I got that Yus, but it doesn't make me dislike it any less," Judai replied, a sheepish smile on his face that had nothing to do with the hand currently finding its way up and under Yusei's shirt and hoodie in order to warm it up faster. He got an amused look from Yusei as he did so, but the other didn't do anything to stop him, so he assumed he was fine with it and that his hands had warmed up enough to not be freezing to the touch considering he didn't flinch at the initial contact with his stomach.

 _Man, now I'm just stuck thinking of all the winters I got through the last few years and wondering how the hell I made it through... it snowed in the place I was half the time and I'm pretty sure I was even colder then, without the heavy winter gear to deal with it_ , Judai mused, thinking back to those times and trying to figure out how he wasn't completely miserable.

" _It was one of the few times you didn't mind going to the castle, mainly because of the huge fireplace in the main room,_ " Yubel reminded him, much more chipper than she'd been thirty minutes ago thanks to Judai finding a way to warm up - she and Haou may not be able to physically feel the cold, but they'd get the feeling of knowing that they have it, and this feeling in particular was super strong for some reason. Judai, personally, thought it was because their body was half duel spirit once again, but also because that half happened to be from Yubel, who was a dragon and therefore had odd body temperatures.

Judai hummed at the reminder, but more than anything else he latched onto the word 'fireplace' - they didn't have one in the apartment, but like Yubel said, they _did_ have one at the castle. The idea sounded better and better as the seconds ticked by, and soon enough he was sitting up enough to give Yusei a kiss and give him his brilliant suggestion to get warm quick.

"If it'll get you to actually drink the tea we made, then yes," Yusei replied, an amused, knowing glint to his eyes that told Judai he knew exactly what his thought process had been regarding his drink.

Judai laughed sheepishly, but was quick to gather stuff into a backpack for them to do alongside the to-go thermoses of the rest of the tea they'd made - after all, there wasn't exactly internet there, so if they wanted to do anything they either had to bring games with them or pre-download movies onto Yusei's laptop or something. It turned out to be a nice few hours though, enjoying the heat from the crackling fireplace and making a game out of seeing how hard they could make it to play cards due to staying huddled together the entire time and seeing each other's hands.


	325. Rule Layout

_**11/21/19**_

"Okay... tomorrow, we've all got the day off from any and all things that we usually have, so are we all in agreement to have the snowball fight then?" Judai started off a few days later, catching the other three all gathered together at dinner and figuring that was the best time to bring it up, "Just asking because if we're going to do this, then I need to lay a few ground rules for this, _especially_ if I'm going to be summoning our duel spirit partners for this."

"Hell yeah we'll be ready tomorrow!" Crow replied, getting nods in agreement from the other two and tossing Judai a grin, "And we'll try not to mess anything up too badly, _right Jack_?"

"Hey, why are you singling me out?!" Jack retorted, sending him quite the offended look - if they hadn't all been at the dinner table and therefore preoccupied with eating, Judai honestly is sure that Jack would've shaken Crow back and forth 'til he was dizzy.

"...I say you both need to not mess anything up too badly," Yusei deadpanned from the side, though he had a little tiny smile on his face that made it clear he was being playful and teasing them. Plus, he was staring at Judai and very clearly _not_ the other two, which was more of a tell than anything else even if the other two looked ready to jump on his case for saying that anyway.

"Okay okay, rules then," Judai quickly interrupted, waving around the bite of food currently on his fork and getting everyone's attention again before any of them could start up one of what Judai liked to call their "Brotherly Love" arguments... where they basically joked around and made fun of each other in jest until someone couldn't take it anymore, then it always just kind-of spiraled down from there and ended with a duel if it came down to it. It wasn't that he didn't find them entertaining, but those types of arguments were not what he needed to deal with right now.

"First rule - make sure you're not throwing anything that's not snow. Basic, yeah, but things happen and duel monsters can be pretty overzealous a lot of the time," Judai started, moving on to the next when he saw all three of them nod in understanding, "Second rule - nothing that boosts raw throwing power. Increased numbers are fine, but the ability to use a snowball as an actual weapon is decidedly _not_ fine; to add to this because we all have a few duel monsters that can fly, if you're in the air try to drop snow balls more than throw them unless you're targeting someone who's also in the air."

"...Do my resonators do any of that?" Jack asked curiously, grumbling a little at the thought of the little guys and all the tricks they'd played on him before.

"Yeah, so make sure you tell them what to do. I'm pretty sure all of them can boost power by varying levels," Judai replied, glad he'd asked the question rather than keep quiet about it. The resonators were a playful, fun group of duel spirits, but man could their mischief seriously go off the rails if they weren't kept in check - they'd shared enough stories about what they'd done for Judai to know they could, he didn't have to witness it himself for him to know.

"How many of our partners are you going to summon?" Yusei asked curiously, tilting his head a bit in wonder while Crow enthusiastically nodded along at the question, "We're going to need a bigger area than the outside area of the apartment building if it's a lot. Should we go to the park?"

"That's what I was thinking and was going to suggest next, to be honest," Judai admitted, taking a bite of his food and quickly chewing and swallowing, "We'll go to the usual clearing, it's a weekday so there's already going to be basically no one there. Also, I dunno how many I'll summon but I'll probably limit it to three or four per person to keep it fair - one to three star monsters only, got it guys? Anything with a star level higher than that will be way too strong for a casual snowball fight."

Granted, it was as casual as a snowball _war_ could be (which wasn't actually very much in reality), but it was the easiest way to put it. This was going to be the Great Snowball War two-point-zero, and they were going all out with their teams of duel spirits.

"Final rule," Judai stated, pointing his fork at all of them before challenging them with a wide, toothy smirk, "Loser has to clean dishes for a week, and also has to be a guinea pig for trying a ton of new stuff I got recently from the spirit dimension. Who knows what the side-effects will be?"

"Fine, you're on!" Crow agreed immediately, sporting a similarly competitive look that the other two were quick to match, "My Blackwings are takin' you guys down!"

"No way, my duel monsters and I will seize victory - there's no other outcome! The King won't lose in something like this!" Jack countered, looking fairly confident in himself as he crossed his arms and smirked at them.

Yusei hummed, giving everyone a look over before smiling knowingly and stating simply, "We'll see about that."

"Oh ho, those are some fighting words there, Yus," Judai teased, seeing that the other two had refocused on each other and were now bantering back and forth trying to one-up each other's challenge.

"Well I'd watch out, because I'll be doing my best and so will my duel monsters," Yusei warned, his smile gaining a biting edge to it as it turned into a small smirk just for him, "No mercy, love."

This was going to be one hell of a fun snowball war.


	326. Great Snow War 20

_**11/22/19**_

A fresh layer of snow was spread out completely over the ground, little protrusions and hints of color the only sign, but just enough of, objects on the outside of the ring closer to the park - otherwise though, the clearing looked like a winter land of white and trees whose snow hung precariously off of them. What was once a flat, pristine area of snow, however, was now the sight of the Great Snow War two-point-zero, and filled with giggling duel spirits and war cries.

"Incoming!"

"Oh shit-!" Jack cursed, doing his best to dive out of the way in time but failing to before the snow that'd gotten dropped from above landed on him, "Damn it Crow, I'm gonna fucking get you next!"

"Not if you can't reach me!" Crow challenged with a smirk, perfectly comfortable in the air with his duel monsters as they were flying him around. Luckily they had some ways of making it so their talons wouldn't pierce throw his skin, so there wasn't any worry about it doing anything other than possibly leaving him with some extremely sore arms afterwards. In order for him to still be able to throw snowballs, he had to dangle off of them with one arm and throw with the other; granted, Crow was pretty damn strong as was proven by his ability to bend his arm enough _while dangling in the air_ in order to have some semblance of an ability to dodge, but doing that for so long was still going to leave him hurting later (something Yusei'd learned about and had to deal with after that first time Judai brought him flying).

Crow was pretty much everyone's target in some way, not just because there was only four of them but also because he'd only gotten hit a couple times, and all of those times had been by Yusei himself. Otherwise, Crow was nearly untouched and continuously gloating that fact around above them like an overhead speaker. It didn't help that Ghibli was Crow's second partner that was out, who used his numerous wings to block a lot of snow that was coming while Blizzard flew Crow around.

"That bastard, just wait 'til I- _oof-_ "

Yusei grinned to himself at the successful throw, taking advantage of the fact that Jack wasn't paying attention to the ground much at all to throw another snowball at him - Jack was actually pretty good at dodging when he wanted to, but usually the Resonators, Dark and Red in this case, would find some way of either blocking the hits with their mostly metal bodies, or accidentally let them go through thanks to the snow ball not hitting the metal part of their bodies but instead their ghostly bodies... where really, it doesn't hit at all and instead just goes straight through them into Jack.

They'd all heard more than a few expletives from Jack whenever that happened, and the resulting, frustrated sigh was always hilarious because Jack simply couldn't blame his duel monsters for trying. Instead, they cooperated with trying to hit everyone else, the Resonators actually being a huge boost to Jack's side thanks to their weapons which let them essentially levitate the snow up and into nearly-perfect snowballs that they then piled up for Jack's convenience.

"Ooh, nice shot!" Judai called out from next to him, sounding far closer than he had been a few seconds ago before Yusei'd thrown the snowball at Jack. This was, decidedly, a very _bad_ thing to happen and Yusei was soon scrambling through the little trenches they'd created in the snow from running through it in order to get away from the incoming snow barrage.

Yes, Judai's shtick was that he didn't just throw one snowball - oh no, he threw a veritable army of snowballs, all at once, and they were nearly impossible to dodge from. Winged Kuriboh was having tons of fun flying around into people's faces to distract them from their impending doom, then flying off just before he threw them in order to start making more snowballs. They weren't very round snowballs, to be honest, but they worked well enough and served their purpose so everything was okay. Judai's second partner was Dandylion, who more than anything else was just staying on the ground and burying around underneath the snow in order to surprise people. It was less about hitting people with snow and more about scaring the living daylights out of them, which they succeeded at with flying colors.

Luckily, Judai was easy to hit so long as Yusei planned a little - he had to wait to make sure he didn't have his ever-growing supply of snow got lower, then he'd strike right after Judai had thrown his stash at someone as well. It'd been a lot of fun, and so far Yusei was ahead of him in their own little competition to see who could land the most hits on the other.

But man, when Yusei got hit, he got hit _hard_ , mainly because Judai's barrage of snowballs was usually seen and then matched with Crow doing his best to hit him from above. The combo was difficult to work around, but he somehow managed to sometimes while others he just got completely doused in snow. Luckily it wasn't more of a problem than it could've been thanks to Judai insisting that _everyone_ wear proper winter gear, so it was just a matter of making sure they took off the layers and took a shower as soon as possible once they got back home rather than waiting in cold, wet clothes.

Yusei's team consisted of Junk Synchron and Junkuriboh, mainly because both of them could float in the air - most of his other low-level duel spirits couldn't do that while materialized, like Quillbolt and Sonic Chick, so those two got to be his partners for this. Junkuriboh was pretty much just lookout for them since he couldn't exactly make a snowball, though he could also double as sabotage at times considering, as Yusei was quick to realize, Junkuriboh _loved_ the snow. So much so, in fact, that they had zero hesitation when it came to tackling and playing in all the other's stashes of snowballs and leaving them to have to restock their supplies before they could do anything else. Thus, while they were off doing that, Junk Synchron helped Yusei make snowballs, opting to throw them alongside him rather than try and make a stash.

There was no point in making a stash, after all, if they were moving around so much trying to run from Judai. Having a supply would be nice, but it would also restrict them to one area, making Judai's job a lot easier.

Unfortunately for Yusei, though, his attempts to run had all been futile as he got pelted in the back and shot straightforward into the fluffy snow, where the only reason it felt like it hurt was because of all the snow now clinging to his face and freezing it.

"Damn it," he groaned, flopping himself over so he was on his back instead of his stomach and doing his best to wipe the snow off his face. Judai laughed as he walked over, leaning over him with a grin that Yusei pouted at before having a sudden idea and having to keep himself from grinning back. He made a little hand signal out of Judai's sight for Synchron, and though he didn't look to confirm just in case it gave his plan away he knew Synchron would be watching for it.

"Nice try, dear. Can't outrun me, though!" Judai stated, foxy grin only growing wider at the deadpan stare Yusei gave him, "Aw, don't give me that look."

"Can you help me up...? Otherwise I think I'm just gonna lay here for a bit," Yusei replied, doing his best to look a little put-out but content - it wasn't very hard to do, to be honest, because laying down on top of the snow was actually a pretty nice break, short as it would be.

"You'd be a prime target for Crow if you did that," Judai mused, glancing over to the side where Crow was currently dodging all the snowballs Jack was throwing at him, "Well, I _suppose_ I could help you up. For a kiss, of course."

"Just help me up, please," Yusei sighed, grabbing the hand that was offered and getting up off the snow before patting himself off a bit, "Thank you."

"No problem! Now my reward?" Judai winked, which was far too cute on him so of course Yusei would have to give him what he wanted - he couldn't resist the urge to, anyway.

He leaned down slowly and gave him a light kiss, dragging it out just long enough for him to be sure that Judai's guard was down as much as it could be in this situation before signalling, catching the snowball Synchron tossed towards him, and quickly shoving it down Judai's neck and back, gripping his other arm around him tightly to make sure he couldn't move away until he was totally finished. The muffled squeaks and the way Judai's eyes shot open wide in shock at the cold were perfect, and when he finally let him move away the frantic tugging at his clothes to try and get the snow to fall out was hilarious.

"It's cold, it's cold, holy _fuck_ it's _fucking cold-_ damn it Yusei, I swear to the gods I'm going to shove twice this amount down _your_ shirt, see how you like it!"

Yusei was already running off though, laughing loudly as he high-fived Synchron for a job well-done. He just had to hope now that he could dodge the consequences of his actions long enough that he wouldn't have snow in his clothes the rest of the time they were outside.


	327. Out of the Cold

_**11/23/19**_

It was a long war, but in the end... well, in an unexpected twist of events, Crow was the one who ended up losing the most. At the end of the war, he was drenched in snow, but mainly because they'd all gotten smart and made sure to hide along the outside of the clearing near the trees - when they did so, Crow then had a chance of slamming into the trees, which had huge piles of un-stabilized snow just waiting to be dropped. Unluckily for him, he did exactly this, not just once but four times because he never seemed to learn his lesson.

"Okay, I-I'll take the stupid loss, but I call first shower!" Crow stated, stuttering from the cold. Having so much snow dropped on him meant that a lot of it had gone down his coat and such, and not only was he soaked, but his clothes as well thanks to not being able to get rid of the snow fast enough.

They were all just getting back to the apartment, having walked to the park and the clearing in the first place since it wasn't that far away, so once the rest of them nodded in confirmation, Crow was quick to run ahead, into the apartment, and presumably up to his room to start peeling off those wet clothes. Needless to say, all of them that were left were glad they hadn't had such huge piles of snow dumped on them that many times, because they were having a difficult time with the cold as-is - they couldn't imagine how freezing they'd be if their clothes were completely wet and they were stuck outside with the chilly, slightly-blowing wind. Sure, they were a little damp around the edges (it was impossible to play in the snow like that and _not_ have your clothes be a little damp) but they weren't anywhere near the level Crow achieved.

"Damn, there he goes," Judai whistled, holding a hand up to his forehead and over his eyes like he was trying to block the sun out of his vision, "What was his nickname? Crow the Bullet?"

"He's certainly living up to it right now, isn't he?" Jack snorted. He'd had his arms crossed the entire way home, not budging for anyone or anything, so it was pretty obvious he was cold; Judai wouldn't be surprised if, internally, he was tempted to just run into the apartment as well since Crow had gotten him not just a lot, but _consistently_ over the course of the day. Judai had only targeted the poor guy maybe four or five times simply because the opportunity was too good to pass up, and he knew Yusei, despite not having quite the amount of sympathy that Judai had for his plight, had hit him seven or eight times. But Crow?

Crow dumped snow on him twenty-two times, and those are just the ones that Judai saw and counted when he wasn't too busy trying to out-smart Yusei. He wouldn't be surprised if the actual number was higher, _especially_ if one counted failed attempts.

"He's got the right idea, though," Yusei stated, not even trying to unlock the door once they came up to it since all three of them had just witnessed Crow's dash for a shower and hot water, clearly leaving the door unlocked in the process, "Now we have to wait for him to finish if we want hot water and not room temp showers."

"Shit, you're right," Jack groaned, shedding his coat like the rest of them and tossing it on the coat rack before immediately heading upstairs to his room, "Well then, I call second shower!"

"Sounds good, third place!" Judai called back with a smirk, sharing an amused look with Yusei when Jack took the bait and yelled back something unintelligible, though he could barely make out something about being 'the king', which was par-for-the-course with Jack.

"Hot chocolate?" Yusei asked, giving him a softer, content smile once they finished laughing that Judai returned along with a happy peck to his cheek.

"Hot chocolate it is, I was just gonna ask," Judai smiled, though he left his arms wrapped around his neck in a slightly-damp, but warm hug thanks to having already taken off their coats, which took the majority of the snowballs all day and were therefore the most damp article of clothing they'd all been wearing, "I don't know if I should really be giving hot cocoa to someone that tricked me so easily, though."

"All's fair in love and war," Yusei quoted teasingly, smile turning quickly into a smirk down at him, "I think we can agree that I won, right?"

"Only because you kept playing dirty tricks!" Judai pouted, shaking him back and forth lightly as he playfully complained, "My shirt was wet for so long, same with my scarf! I had to keep pulling it away from me because the stupid thing was so cold, 'cause you kept managing to shove snow down my back!"

"And your front," Yusei reminded him, bringing a hand up to scratch through his hair lightly as if in apology.

" _And_ my front, damn it! If I hadn't promised not to use my shadows you'd have been done for," Judai huffed, leaning into him more and relaxing, "...and this is nice, keep doin' that."

"Later. For now, let's go get the water on the stove so it can boil while we change into something warmer," Yusei replied, chuckling when Judai sighed resignedly and pulled away just enough to latch onto his arm instead so they could walk, "Judai..."

"I love you~"

"I love you, too."


	328. Recuperation

_**11/24/19**_

"I need a break," Judai sighed, realizing he'd done nothing but stare at the notebook in his lap for the past few minutes while his mind went off into the clouds. He tilted his head up from where he was leaning on Yusei on their bed, the other tapping away at his laptop - he'd said it was something about formatting a report? Or was it just homework?

Either way, they'd both spent the last three hours working. Yusei had his ever-present schoolwork to finish while Judai'd been saddled that morning with figuring out a four-course meal for some fancy party that would be Christmas themed in a couple weeks. Now, normally this wouldn't be such a drag to do since he actually found putting this kind of thing together fun (the finished product with everything fitting together was always satisfying to him), but this one in particular was for a rush job. The client had paid Phoenix's company a good chunk of money to make sure the party was hosted in two weeks as opposed to the usual much, much longer advanced notice they required, and Judai had to finish that menu _today_ to make sure everyone else could do their jobs.

It wasn't even just one menu either, since the client had requested a couple to choose between. At least Edo had told him he'd be getting compensated for it, so he was going to do the best he could with the time - still, he seriously needed a break from writing out his various ideas, all of which he had to write recipes out for which wasn't actually the easiest thing to do when one winged their cooking half the time like he did, throwing caution to the wind.

"Yeah, I was just thinkin' about taking one too," Yusei replied, shutting his laptop and putting both it and Judai's supplies off to the side after Judai capitalized on the moment to put his stuff on top of it, "I'm almost done with my work, just need to do the boring part which is typing in all the calculations... how's your stuff coming along?"

"It's comin' I guess," Judai shrugged, letting out a yawn as he stretched lazily and fell to lie across Yusei's lap, "I can't think anymore right now, but I've got roughly... two-thirds of it done? Almost, I guess, I dunno."

"Don't know?" Yusei questioned, leaning over him with an amused smile and brushing the hair out of his face.

Judai stared back up at him tiredly but playfully, stating, "I just spent the last five minutes being totally zoned out, Yus. I literally have no idea where I was at, I honestly forgot."

"Impressive."

"Oh hush, I don't wanna hear that from you, Mr. Gear-head."

They both chuckled at that, letting a peaceful silence fall over them for a bit so they could just enjoy the quiet and let their brains recuperate. It helped a lot when Judai suddenly felt a hand land on his head, fingers gently starting to thread through his hair over-and-over again in a relaxing pattern that made him feel like he could fall asleep - he knew he couldn't let himself take a nap though, not unless he wanted to wake up and be even more tired from essentially oversleeping.

"Let's go for a walk," Judai suggested, turning his head slightly more towards Yusei and opening his eyes to look at him, "It's a good day for it, it's sunny outside."

"Won't get as cold despite all the snow around," Yusei hummed, agreeing with the idea, "Alright, sounds good to me. Anywhere in particular you wanted to go?"

"Um... I didn't even think of that, give me a minute," Judai admitted, grinning when Yusei let out a little snort in response, "Quiet, you. I'm thinking here." He thought it over for a little bit, trying to decide if he really wanted to get anything - if he did, it would probably be food or drink of some sort so that he didn't have to cook or make anything. That was the only downside to having to focus so hard on food for work sometimes, not wanting to cook the rest of the day despite usually being glad to the rest of the time.

Right when he was about to open his mouth to say so, though, his stomach answered for him by grumbling just loud enough to be heard by both of them. He looked up at Yusei with a sheepish grin, the other practically on the verge of smirking as he raised his eyebrows at him.

"You wouldn't happen to want food, would you?" Yusei asked teasingly, easily dodging the arm that came up to try and pull him down towards him by leaning backwards a bit.

"I may be a bit hungry, yeah," Judai laughed, sitting up to try and get the upper-hand again so he could tease him back with some eskimo kisses, "Hungry for you! Get back here, you're my next victim!"

"Wait- Judai-!" Yusei stuttered, though he was cut-off before he could say much by Judai jumping on him and peppering his face with an onslaught of kisses. He kept it up for a while longer, relishing the sweet sound of Yusei's laughter as he did so relentlessly.

"Okay, _now_ I'm ready, let's go!" Judai hummed happily, pulling back finally with a wide grin as he looked down at Yusei, who was still in the middle of processing that he'd stopped - he was seriously too adorable for any world, how could he possibly expect Judai to resist him?


	329. Off to Play More

_**11/25/19**_

It turned out that playing in the snow was a hit amongst everyone's duel spirits, which was something Judai only found out when he was basically mobbed by them begging to materialize and go play outside again. There were even a few that hadn't participated in the snowball fight and had come because they heard how fun it was, and even Judai wouldn't be able to deny them. Thus, he made sure both Crow and Jack would be cool with him borrowing their respective monsters' cards for the day so he didn't have to worry about them following him all the way to the park, then went straight to work preparing some lunch to bring with him since it was doubtful he'd be leaving until it was dinnertime.

The entire group followed him into the kitchen with a now-mellowed out blanket of various calls thanks to learning they'd get to play, most opting to float around and watch him do his thing while the rest found their own things to occupy themselves with - Crow's Blackwings found Pharaoh and were having fun bugging him, Jack's Resonators kept jabbing each other with their respective weapons whenever they thought Judai wasn't looking, and Junk Synchron and Winged Kuriboh were running around in endless circles around the perimeter of the room.

Honestly, as long as they were distracting themselves away from him for the most part Judai was fine with it. It was just that Yusei hadn't actually come down yet though since he'd decided on taking a nice, hot shower to start off the day with, so he had to handle all of their usual duel spirit rowdiness on his own. They weren't doing too bad on their own though, like he said, and making lunch was soon turned into a spectator-sport.

"Yusei!" Judai heard Junk Synchron cheer from across the room, looking up to try and find the newest addition to the party. He spotted him quickly in the kitchen entryway, looking out over the sea of various duel spirits with an amused smile.

"I let you go off for twenty minutes, and I come down only to find this," Yusei teased, getting laughs out of everyone present and taking the drink cup full of coffee that Judai proceeded to give him as thanks in advance for putting up with all the various duel monsters and spirits that morning, "I dunno, will we suddenly be getting an influx of visits per day or will there be more?"

"I'd be more surprised if they didn't come back more often, we seem to have gotten them addicted to playing in the snow somehow," Judai laughed, happily making his way over and packing up their lunches (he'd figured that Yusei would be going with him, so he'd made two, of course). He pecked him on the lips as he passed by, much to the amusement of their duel spirits who watched from the side and cheered quietly when he did so.

"Is that why everyone's out here?" Yusei questioned, turning to face all their duel spirits with a smile, "For the snow?" Upon getting nods of confirmation from everyone around him, he sighed playfully and wrapped his arm around Judai's neck, pulling him into a warm hug that he had to take a moment to simply enjoy the heat of, "No wonder you were packing food, you couldn't have gotten away from them if you tried."

"You wouldn't have gotten away from them either," Judai retorted, grinning up at him and humming as he double-checked all their belongings before heading out - it felt a little like he was leading a field-trip of sorts, only with duel spirits as the kids and himself and Yusei as the de-facto leaders of the group, "I mean, just look at those two over there - bird puppy eyes. Did you know birds could make puppy eyes? Because _I_ didn't know birds could make puppy eyes."

"They're Crow's duel spirit partners, I think I'd be more surprised if they couldn't," Yusei admitted, pulling another laugh from him and leaning down to kiss him for a few seconds, coaxing a little satisfied hum out of him before pulling back and looking satisfied himself, "Anyway, shall we? I'm guessing we're going to the park, to the usual place."

"Yup!" Judai replied cheerily, turning to face their merry band of duel monsters with a wide smile, "Okay, everyone follow me! Let's go play in the snow!"


	330. Snow Angels

_**11/26/19**_

It wasn't nearly as chaotic in the clearing as it had been when they were having the all-out snowball fight war, but it was still a bit hectic - there were roughly twelve materialized duel spirits running amok and having fun, chasing each other in the snow, building things with the snow, and various other things that they could think up. Thankfully Yusei had the bright idea to tell them that they _weren't_ to go throwing too many snowballs, which they they listened to and made everything a lot easier to keep track of.

It was just easier overall to watch a bunch of duel monsters when there weren't flying projectiles everywhere that could end up hitting him and Judai (more-so him than Judai though, since Judai would almost instinctively block them with a solidified shadow). Plus, it meant that there would be less chance of an argument breaking out, which was always a good thing.

Yusei had witnessed an argument between Junk Synchron and Winged Kuriboh only once, though he couldn't remember for the life of him what it'd been about; all he needed to know was that it was something pretty minor that they'd simply gotten too fired up about, and that the aftermath was a nearly-destroyed couch that Judai only just barely managed to save before any damage was actually done. Before that moment he had not only not known how sharp a Kuriboh's claws actually were, nor that Synchron apparently had a little weapons compartment in his body.

So yes, no arguments was the preferable outcome for the day, and it was luckily looking to turn out to be like that. He and Judai watched from the sidelines on a bench for a little bit, sipping on the coffee and tea they'd each respectively brought and laughing whenever one of the fluffier monsters flopped into the snow only to pop out with a happy squeal and snow sticking to their fur.

"Come on," Judai eventually said, putting down his tea on the bench and standing up before turning around to hold a hand out to him with a smile, "Let's go join them! I wanna make snow angels."

Yusei hummed, putting down his own drink as well and taking the offered hand with a smile of his own, "Alright, but I don't actually know what those are."

"Don't worry, it's like... the simplest thing ever," Judai replied, leading him towards an area of the clearing that had relatively untouched snow still on the ground since it was off to the side of where most of their partners were playing, "Basically, you just lie down in the snow, move your arms and legs in an arc to make the 'angel', then stand back up to look at it."

"How do people think of these things?" Yusei muttered, an exasperated look taking over as he thought about it - it was ridiculous and pretty random, but he could see why it would be appealing to do.

Judai snickered at his reaction, letting gravity take over as he fell backwards into the snow, starting to do exactly what he'd said and moving his arms and legs back and forth, "Who knows? Now come on, get next me and make a snow version of yourself."

It took him a moment to process, but Yusei eventually realized what he'd said and hovered over him so he could see his amused smile, "Clever devil still, huh?"

"Only for my lovely angel," Judai grinned unabashedly, "Now don't make me get up and push you in the snow, Yus."

"I'm going, I'm going," Yusei chuckled, falling back about two feet away so that their arms wouldn't be in each other's way. The snow was a light cold on his back, which felt rather nice thanks to all the layers he was wearing - his whole back would be covered in snow after this, and his legs would probably be a bit colder than he'd like, but it was overall a good feeling. He quickly did the arcs to make the snow angel, feeling a little ridiculous at first but getting used to the motions quickly before finally laughing because it _was_ pretty fun to do.

"Fun, right?" Judai asked, both of them turning their heads to look at each other.

"Yeah, more than I thought it would be," Yusei admitted, sharing a chuckle with him before asking, "So we just stand up now?"

"Yup, though be careful and try to put most of your weight on your feet when you can, otherwise you'll leave hand-prints and other dents in it," Judai advised, sitting up first to demonstrate - he didn't use his hands at all, relying purely on core strength to pull his upper half up into a sitting position before rolling onto his feet, so that's what Yusei did as well.

 _Thank the stars we kept up exercising as a morning routine_ , Yusei mused after, taking a deep breath as he stepped away to look at their creations (if one could really call them that).

"I guess they do look a bit like angels..." Yusei stated, tilting his head to the side as he studied them before nudging Judai playfully, "Mine's got bigger wings."

"Wha- hey! That's not fair, you've got longer arms than me!" Judai whined, pouting up at him and looking back and forth between him and their snow angels before shaking him back and forth by hugging his arm, "That's it, this arm is mine, which means that I have one of those wings and therefore bigger wings overall than you."

Yusei let out a bark of laughter at that, not expecting that kind of logic at all and breaking down into even more laughter when Judai took mock offense to him finding it funny. The banter lasted until they got pulled into a game of tag somehow by a few Blackwings and Sonic Chick, and even then the laughter kept up when Judai ended up tagging Yusei once with a quick kiss before running away as fast as he came.

At least he got his revenge when he was finally able to tag him later in the game, making sure his snow-covered gloves rubbed all over his face when he pulled him into a kiss as well before sprinting away - seeing Judai's cheeks turn red from the cold of it was adorable.


	331. Snowman Contest

_**11/27/19**_

Lunch was spent sitting down at the bench again and watching over their partners, except this time they all had a specific task - to get into groups and see who could make the best snowman. Obviously, it could really be a snow sculpture of just about anything and it'd count, but it was easier to just call it a snowman competition and call it a day so they could split back off to go eat; while they set up their food, everyone split up into teams amongst themselves before getting to work sculpting.

"Isn't the snow a little powder-y here for making snowmen?" Yusei wondered quietly in between bites, getting a little hum from Judai in response.

"It is, but honestly it doesn't matter - they're duel monsters, they'll find some way of packing it down enough to stick well," Judai stated, shrugging a little in a 'what-can-you-do?' type of way, "Wouldn't be surprised if they were packing their snowballs tight enough to make them less so an easily breakable target and more so a dense projectile shot."

"Wouldn't surprise me, either," Yusei agreed, thinking immediately of that row of tiny tools and weapons that Junk Synchron had revealed he had once. If Synchron had _that_ hidden this whole time, then something like making deadly snowballs was unsurprising and very believable.

"Anyway, how's the food? I was a bit worried I overcooked the rice since I kinda... forgot about it for a little while there yesterday," Judai asked, laughing a bit sheepishly at his actions, "Thought it might've gotten burned in a few places."

"Never would've known if you hadn't brought it up 'cause it's delicious as always," Yusei reassured him, smiling down at him and pecking his forehead when he leaned his head on his shoulder for a moment in thanks, "I don't think you've made a single bad dish beyond those few times where it was out of your control."

"Please don't remind about that, I was trying to forget," Judai complained, a pained look forming at the reminder of the couple times his cooking had gone horribly wrong - it was never actually his fault either, since it was always an outside circumstance that caused the issue. For instance, one time Crow had tried to help without really asking and almost set the kitchen on fire thanks to how much oil he put in the pan, the excess splattering everywhere and fanning the stove's flames on accident.

Crow was promptly banned from helping in the kitchen after that incident, and just for good measure, Jack was too since both Judai and he knew that it was only a matter of time before Jack messed up helping out as well somehow, so it was easier to just get rid of the option so it never had the chance to occur.

"Alright, I'll be quiet," Yusei chuckled, pecking Judai on the forehead once again when he got an exasperated look in response before going back to his food, which was decidedly _not_ burned in the slightest. It didn't take long for them both to finish, closing up their boxes and putting them away safely before grabbing their newly-refilled drinks and heading over to where there were now some very... interestingly shaped snow sculptures standing in the field.

 _That one should definitely_ _ **not**_ _be standing_ , Yusei mused, staring at one in particular whose limbs and such shouldn't be able to stay in the air like that without falling, yet it was. It seemed Judai was very right about them finding a way to pack the snow tight despite the powder-y type of snow they currently had at their disposal.

"Alright everyone! Time's up, the judges are ready and here!" Judai shouted, getting everyone's attention through the ruckus, "Come over here so I know you're not tryin' to cheat!"

He got a cacophony of various forms of 'We wouldn't cheat!' at that moment, though everyone did come over looking plenty happy and eager to see what they thought of their creations. Once everyone was gathered, they started going around the clearing in a circle, looking at each of the sculptures and giving out compliments.

Some of them were seriously impressive, like the one that Yusei had picked out right off the bat where it shouldn't even be standing but was and others that weren't quite as unique in form as that one but had lots of little details that he wouldn't have thought possible using snow. It was clear that the groups had made multiple as well since there were literally more snowmen than duel spirits present, but the quality didn't seem to drop at all.

What was most impressive, though, was the fact that they did all this in roughly thirty minutes, which was the amount of time they took for lunch.

Judai hummed in thought, pursing his lips as he studied the clearing once they'd gone around in a full circle and looked at all of them, saying, "Choosing just one is too hard, they're all really good..."

"Same, I don't know if I can choose just one," Yusei agreed, tilting his head in thought as well, "We might just have to say they all win, they're all great in their own way."

Luckily this decision was well-received, and Judai and Yusei could only sigh in relief that they hadn't been forced to choose, holding hands and watching fondly as Synchron suddenly started going on a rant about how they should totally build a snow machine for Starlight Junktion while all the other duel monsters gathered around him and listened curiously, wanting to know how such a thing would be possible. Based on what Yusei was hearing though, it was _very_ possible by utilizing duel energy as usual with their type of technology, and put actually trying it on his mental to-do list for the next time he went there.


	332. Snow-filled City

_**11/28/19**_

Judai sucked in a breath, mentally preparing himself for what he was about it see - apparently once everyone had gone back home after that snow day, Yusei's duel monsters had legitimately tried to make a snow machine, then promptly tested it on a section of Starlight Junktion. Needless to say, it'd worked just as intended, and that section of the city was absolutely teeming with snow and decorations now.

Yusei's duel spirits had surprised him with it, actually. They knew Yusei had wanted to try working on it with them and felt bad that they'd been so eager they'd finished it without involving him in the process, but they made up for it by promising a full explanation and rolling out some of their other major project ideas that they were thinking of for the city. The place could always be improved somehow, and the city was actually armed to the teeth to deal with intruders believe it or not - it was just so well-hidden and designed that so long as you went there with either permission or without foul intent, you'd be fine.

"Alright, let's go!" Judai cheered, squeezing Yusei's hand before leading him through the portal he'd opened up. Almost instantly he was hit with the cold, frosty air of the city, which made him really glad they'd both decided to wear their heavy winter outfits just in case they'd gone overboard with the whole snow thing.

Which, apparently, they actually _did_ go overboard - the place they stepped into looked like a winter wonderland. There were flakes of snow falling from the sky at a slow, steady pace, blankets of white covered the entire area, and there were holiday decorations literally everywhere. Christmas lights, signs, the odd machine here-and-there that was clearly custom-made but did some cool little light show on the ground or on the wall across from it, and tons of duel monsters that were wandering around the snow-filled area and having a fun time.

"Okay, this is way cooler than I expected," Judai stated, seeing Yusei nod in agreement out of the corner of his eye, neither of them looking at each other. They were too busy looking at all the lights and snow to do that yet, though in the back of his mind Judai prepared to bring out his phone to take a picture of Yusei when the timing was right.

"Yusei, Judai! Over here!" they heard, turning towards the voice only to see Yusei's usual partner group all together - Synchron, Quillbolt, Sonic Chick, and the more recent addition of Junkuriboh (who'd fit in almost seamless when he'd joined a couple months ago) were all waving at them to come over. It got the attention of some of the other duel monsters as well, who all stopped to at least wave at them as they passed by before going on their way - half of them seemed to be carrying stuff, so they were probably too busy to chat at the moment.

"So? Do you like it?" Synchron asked excitedly, though before they could really answer he was tackled into the snow by Winged Kuriboh, who'd suddenly come out of the blue. Junkuriboh squealed and floated after them as they tumbled through the snow while Quillbolt and Sonic Chick stared in confusion for a second as to where he'd gone; Judai and Yusei shared an amused look before snorting at the ridiculousness of the scene, huddling together almost instinctively to get a little warmer.

"I do," Yusei answered once everyone'd calmed down a little, smiling happily as he looked back around the city, "I never thought I'd see this place like this..."

"Neither did any of us, yet here we are," Quillbolt said, rolling over towards Yusei, who let go of Judai's hand to pick him up - it was cute, so Judai didn't mind the loss of warmth _too_ much, "This isn't even the best part, though."

"And what would that be, then?" Judai grinned, shoving his now empty hands into his pockets to keep them as warm as possible, though he didn't really need to since he was actually wearing gloves. They were light and thin, but made of a nice, fluffy material that kept his hands warm despite that. He and Yusei had had a good laugh about it too when he first got them and wore them out, joking about how now Yusei would see what it was like to hold hands with someone wearing gloves all the time.

"No spoilers. Follow me though, I'll show you!" Sonic Chick stated, sounding a lot less shy than she usually did. Maybe the cold weather and snow was good for them after all - it seemed to really be bringing out the best of a lot of their duel monsters, at least.

They followed her down the streets, making their way through the town and stopping to talk with a few of Yusei's duel spirits they came across who were set up off to the side and working on personal projects before finally seeing what they were being led to. A huge, open plaza was the sight they were met with when they turned that last corner, filled with just as many layers of snow and decorated with tons of lights, but the best part was the middle.

"How the hell did you guys get a tree that big?" Judai wondered, slightly shocked that they'd managed to not only somehow find a tree in this place (which was nearly completely devoid of greenery aside from a greenhouse system for food purposes), but one that big and perfect. It was completely wrapped in lights of varying colors and topped with a huge star at the top, and it really took the cake for making this the best winter plaza he'd ever seen in his life.

"Trade secret!" Synchron chirped, though he did immediately admit after, "Though, not really. Y'know how we had to figure out how to get out in the first place, just to get you in here? We actually combed through all those lab rooms and found a bunch of old research and studies, and some of them were about plants. We took stuff from there, worked with some of the stuff in the greenhouse, and well, you can see the result."

"It's beautiful," Yusei said, still staring up at the tree and taking in the sheer size of it - the lights all reflected across him, and Judai quickly, with very practiced ease and smoothness, pulled out his phone to snap a picture of the scene. He was just way too photogenic, and as he double-checked the couple of pictures he'd taken Yusei finally looked over at him and saw what he'd done - his face flushed a little, and when combined with the cold and a little smile, was too precious for Judai's heart to handle.


	333. Gift Ideas

_**11/29/19**_

"It's already almost December... where did this last month go?" Judai wondered out loud, curling closer to Yusei under the sheets and blankets - they'd recently switched out all the sheets to warmer, thicker ones with a comforter on top, so there was plenty of warmth to go around at night between them despite the cold. It was like the summertime issues they'd had with the weather but in reverse, so they needed little heaters around the house instead of fans, and a chill seemed to settle in to the deepest corners of the apartment somehow.

Hell, they'd even went out and gotten Pharaoh a little cozy blanket just for him to curl up in, which turned out to be a very good idea considering there hadn't been a single morning since then where the cat hadn't been snoozing away underneath it. It was pretty common to find him lying in front of any of the heaters around the house, though he seemed to prefer the one underneath Yusei's desk and the one by the kitchen table.

"It disappeared under the snow," Yusei replied, trying to be cheeky but yawning right afterwards which ruined that impression, "I dunno though, you're right that it was just gone."

"I think we've finally gotten used to our new schedule, or at least your new schedule - mine's still sporadic as hell a lot of the time," Judai mused, letting out a sigh, "I have work again soon, and then again right afterwards..."

"You'll survive, I believe in you," Yusei chuckled, peppering his face with a bunch of eskimo kisses to make him laugh, "Cute."

"Yeah? Well, you too, so take that!" Judai retorted, poking him lightly in the stomach with a mischievous grin, knowing that he hit just the right spot to tickle him from the way Yusei flinched ever-so-slightly in response, giving him a playful glare.

"Hey now, aren't we already tired enough?" Yusei asked, laughing quietly along with him after a few moments of staring at each other, "I don't think we need a tickle fight to make us even more tired..."

"You're lucky you're right, I _am_ tired - watching over those guys is exhausting. Who knew they'd go so crazy for snow of all things?" Judai laughed, settling in once again and wrapping his arms comfortably around the other, stealing some extra warmth by putting his hands under his shirt and hoodie.

It'd been days since they'd first all played in the snow and since Yusei's duel spirits had transformed a part of Starlight Junktion into a winter wonderland, but since then it felt like that was all any of their duel spirits wanted to do - they all just wanted to play in the snow together and have fun, and it ended up ultimately resulting in Judai calling it quits and getting them to sort out some sort of way to just go to Starlight Junktion. He may have a lot of stamina and energy himself, but damn, even _Judai_ was starting to get tired from the sheer amount of time and energy their duel monsters were dedicated to snow and everything about it.

"Well, now they can go crazy for snow without us having to be there," Yusei stated, sounding just as tired and happy about the decision as Judai did, "Though I do feel like we should go every once in a while to check on them... I heard Blizzard, Red Resonator, and Speed Warrior making some sort of plan about gifts for Christmas? But it involved some pretty high-level tech for some reason, which is the part that worries me."

"Ah... yeah we should, uh, probably keep an eye out for that," Judai agreed, knowing that if Winged Kuriboh got wind of any plans like that he'd be all over it. The fluff-ball was surprisingly good at that kind of stuff and keeping fun stuff a secret, so Judai wouldn't put it past him to do so with this and even try to make it worse.

"Speaking of presents though, what exactly are we doing for everyone? There's... a _lot_ more people to give presents to this year and I don't know what we're going to do about that," Yusei asked, pulling back just enough to look at him curiously.

Judai smiled at the question, partially because really, how sweet was it that Yusei counted everyone as a friend if they were his friend, even with the very limited interactions he'd had with some of them? But also, he was just glad that Yusei'd brought it up because Judai actually _knew_ what he wanted to do and had thought it up at the beginning of the month; he probably would've forgotten if he'd been asked much later than now, to be honest.

"Okay, so you'll have to help me figure out _exactly_ what to give everyone, but I actually thought up the perfect idea already - basically, we'll make cooking care packages," Judai replied, going on to explain, "So like, have you ever been at the store and seen those present jars of like, hot chocolate? Or something else, where it's basically the dry ingredients all layered on top of each other in the jar?"

"I think that rings a bell," Yusei said after a second of thought, humming before smiling at him happily, "I like that idea. What exactly did you need me to do for it?"

"You come up with what I should do the ingredients for, and you'll be the one to do the tags - then we'll both have contributed and it'll be a joint present from us to everyone else. Perfect, right? Obviously we'll get extra things for certain people, but I thought it would be a great baseline gift that'll be easy to do while still being nice."

"I never would've thought of that on my own, but it's a great idea. Good job, Judai."

Judai snuggled into him happily, glad that his idea had been well-received and was ready to be put into motion whenever they were ready - it honestly made everything so much simpler, and he was so glad he'd had that idea when he'd been in that autumn recipe phase.


	334. Busy Holidays

_**11/30/19**_

They'd gotten a couple offers to hang out by various random friends of theirs, considering it was almost full-swing into the holiday season, but they both were a bit too busy to actually be able to do so. Yusei's classes were all ending in roughly two weeks, which meant that he therefore also had finals to deal with (though he really wasn't too worried about it), while Judai had a couple work events he had to go to so he was definitely not able to go and would probably be too busy recuperating from it at home.

"Man, this sucks," Judai sighed, stabbing his next bite of egg a little too harshly and causing the fork to make a loud clang against the plate, "Oops..."

"Well, think of it this way - we'll both be cleared out a couple weeks from now, and then we'll still have almost a full two weeks to celebrate and do whatever we want," Yusei said, nudging his legs gently under the table with a smile, "It won't be that bad."

"I know, I know... I just hate having so many work days clumped together like this, especially when they're all basically all-day events," Judai explained, nudging him back and returning the smile, "I do enjoy coming back home to a certain someone, though."

Yusei chuckled, feeling like he was getting some major deja-vu all of a sudden, "I swear I once said something along those lines, it's like we've swapped positions now."

Judai laughed, pausing for a moment to drink a bit of water and swallow the bite he was in the middle of chewing to make sure he didn't choke on it before replying, "You're right, but if I suddenly start pulling all-nighters working on menus or something please set me straight."

That got a snort out of him, and they both laughed before continuing to eat - Yusei really _had_ come a long way from how he'd been in the beginning, and so had Judai. Both cared a lot more about themselves as a result of caring about the other, and it'd done nothing but good things for them.

"Speaking of all-nighters though..." Yusei mused, thinking about how the next few weeks would probably play out, "If I try to pull one while studying, make sure to knock some sense into me, please."

"Well, half the battle is recognizing that it's a bad thing, isn't? I think you'll be fine," Judai pointed out, waving his fork around at him with a smile, "The fact that you're even studying at all is good, just don't go overboard or it backfires. Wisdom straight from Haou, of course, because you know just how _great_ of a student I was..." He seemed to listen to something that was said to him, making a face afterwards and pouting a little, which Yusei could only assume meant his not-very-good track record as a student was _definitely_ brought up, before continuing, "Anyway, you get the point. I wouldn't let you skip sleep anyway, especially if I'm going to be working a lot."

"Very true," Yusei agreed, smiling fondly at him - he fully expected to be forcefully dragged off to bed on a few of the nights that Judai got home from work, mainly because he wouldn't be getting back until much, much later at night than usual. It's not his fault that the events happened to be scheduled to last until midnight, or even past midnight, with food needing to be made the entire evening so he couldn't leave early like some of the ones he worked at, but both of them simply weren't used to staying up that late anymore; if they ever did, like that one time recently where Yusei had finished up a school project overnight after not being able to all day, they either really felt it in the morning or slept through until the afternoon.

No longer could some cups of coffee be all he needed to run on, and honestly, Yusei was glad for it. He felt a lot better overall and never wanted to go back to that kind of lifestyle because every time he got a little taste of it again, he just felt awful and tired beyond belief.

They ate in peaceful silence for a little while, occasionally looking out the open window of the kitchen and enjoying the sunlight that'd finally come back around for a bit - it was scheduled to snow again later in the week, but for now they had clear weather and sunshine, along with it being cold enough for the snow that was already there to not melt at all. It was nice and cool, and Yusei had had quite a bit of fun simply people-watching whenever he was on break or eating lunch between classes. The main quad area of the college was filled with various snowmen and walls from people having snowball fights, and he amused himself by betting on which side would win whenever a group decided to go through with it, along with whether any passerby would get caught up in it on accident.

It'd happened before, but luckily there hadn't been any furious reactions yet. He assumed that the second a snowball hit someone who was holding their binders or laptop instead of putting them in their bag was when that kind of reaction would be brought forth, though, since it'd get those all wet in the process.

"Hey, Yus," Judai suddenly spoke up, leaning his head on one hand on the table now that he'd finished his breakfast, "When you get back from class today, do you think you'll want to go out anywhere? I kinda want to go out to the arcade again and see what stuff they've changed for the holidays."

"I'm up for that," Yusei said after a moment to think about it, "It's all just lectures today, so actually doing something sounds nice. Maybe we could just ride around and look at all the holiday decorations too, they've all been getting put up recently and we haven't exactly been out in the city at night since then."

"It's a date, then!~"

"That it is..."

As Judai started talking about what kinds of stuff he imagined the arcade could've done for the holidays, Yusei ate the rest of his breakfast, a content smile stuck on his face as he listened to him fondly.


	335. Tech Issues

_**12/1/19**_

Yusei cursing was not exactly an uncommon occurrence, but it happened little enough that anytime it came out of the blue was surprising for Judai - casual drops in conversation didn't phase him, but right now he was getting ready to go to work and Yusei had suddenly started muttering up a storm of expletives under his breath. The last time he had heard him swear so much was when they'd been trying to get the stupid program to get rid of the reactor's excess duel energy to work, so it had to have been something pretty frustrating.

"You uh... doin' okay over there?" Judai carefully asked, raising his eyebrows slowly when Yusei let out a groan and feel back onto the bed in an uncharacteristically dramatic fashion, "...I'm gonna take that as a 'no', then."

"My laptop has apparently decided to start freezing randomly," Yusei explained, sighing heavily with his hands over his face, "It happened twice last night when I was using it, but those were only for like, thirty seconds. This time it's been three minutes already and it's still stuck."

"That sucks," Judai winced, thinking about just how important that laptop was to him. Yusei used that thing heavily all day every day for the most part, so having it suddenly start to fail on him was probably the emotional equivalent to the world ending, "How long have you had it for?"

"How long...? Well, I've had the physical unit for roughly five years, but once we all got settled in the city I dug into it and upgraded most of the parts," Yusei replied, pinching the bridge of his nose now with a frown, "It shouldn't be freezing like this at all."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out," Judai reassured him, coming over and sitting on the side of the bed next to him so he could lightly scratch his fingers through the other's hair, "And look at it this way - if worse comes to worst, you just get a new laptop. I know you back up all your stuff as you make it, so it's not like it's lost or anything."

"Yeah, but I don't want to need a new one in the first place," he muttered, leaning into his hand and moving his hands down a little so he could look at him, "Getting used to a new one would take a while, even if everything is set-up in the exact same way."

"Well, at least now you know what you'll be doing today while I'm gone," Judai chuckled, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead with a smile, "Try not to let it get you _too_ frustrated, though."

"Isn't that always the goal with these types of things?" Yusei mused, a smile finally gracing his face as he looked up at him, "I'll definitely try, but the same goes to you today as well - you don't want a repeat of the spinach incident, do you?"

"I swear I'm gonna kill Phoenix, he told you about that?" Judai pouted, lying down next to him now and just letting the feeling of embarrassment soak in, "Okay, to be absolutely fair, it was the _third time_ the dude had used lettuce instead of spinach. It's not that fuckin' hard to tell them apart, damn it. So what if he was a volunteer and not an actual cook? It's telling the difference between _lettuce and spinach_."

"I know, but it's still hilarious," Yusei snickered, poking him lazily in the cheek with a grin, "Poor guy is never going to forget the difference after the lecture you gave him."

"I don't wanna talk about work when I have to leave to work in twenty minutes," Judai complained, rolling so he was on top of Yusei and squishing him - Yusei let out a huff at the weight, suddenly having to breath deeper in order to get in the same amount of air.

"You're heavy for being so skinny," Yusei managed to breathe out, laughing when Judai gave him a playful glare in return, "Kidding, kidding."

"You better be, you know my weight - I'm perfectly healthy for my height!"

"Yeah, but only just barely, otherwise you'd be in the underweight category - also can you please get off? Your elbow's digging into me, it's starting to hurt."

Judai got off with a sheepish smile, sitting back up next to him quickly, "Oops, sorry. Anyway, that's semantics - all that matters is that I'm healthy!"

"That's true," Yusei agreed, sitting up as a well and pulling him into a side hug that Judai was more than happy to lean into, "I'd be far more worried, otherwise. You eat a lot 'cause of your duel spirit side, but that also mean's you're more at risk for under-eating than anything else."

"I never actually thought of it that way before... it makes perfect sense, though," Judai said, moving around a bit so he could be more in his lap and lean back into him, "Enough of that, though - I demand cuddles and kisses before I somewhat willingly walk into the hell that is a very busy kitchen."


	336. Holiday Plans

_**12/2/19**_

Judai was met with a pleasant surprise on his second day of having three very long work days in a row, in the form of one very excited and chatty Carly, who was invited to the party to report on it.

"You're one of the main chefs for it? I can't wait to eat, then!" Carly realized excitedly, practically jump up and down a bit in place as they talked - she'd seen him walking in since they both had gotten there early, Judai so he could work with the other cooks to get the kitchen ready and Carly so that she could check-in and get a few extra interviews with people who would probably be far too busy to talk later, and they'd both decided to wander around figuring out to go together.

"Yeah, I hope the selection is good. I had to make that stupid menu in a day, and that's only because this whole thing was rushed," Judai sighed, adjusting the straps of his bag around his shoulders and stretching a little, "What is this thing even for? I somehow completely lost that in between all the rushing to make sure everything was good to go."

"It's a charity party for Christmas - all the donations are going towards places that'll make sure people are well-fed on the holidays," Carly explained, clearly simplifying it down a lot so he didn't have to think to hard about any extra details, "That's the gist of it, at least. The rich guy who's paying for it is basically doing it for attention though, based on his track record and the other five parties of his that I was able to look up info about."

"Well, at least it's doing something good, even if the reasons are a little off the mark..." Judai mused, pausing for a moment to listen since he could've _sworn_ he heard Edo just now. It took a few seconds, but he eventually heard him talking again and recognized the voice, even if he couldn't necessarily understand what was being said because of all the walls and hallways in between them; he nodded towards one hallway, gesturing for Carly to follow, saying, "I heard the guy I'm supposed to be meeting down this way, so it's probably where you're supposed to go, too."

"Let's hope so, I've only got an hour and a half to tear into these people and get my answers," Carly replied, mumbling a little extra under her breath, "Stupid dude has avoided me at all other times, I'm gonna finally get my damn questions answered about _everything_."

Judai laughed quietly before asking, "Anyway, I was curious - how'd that one Halloween article go? Y'know, the one for DDO. I realized I never actually asked."

"Oh! It was really popular, as I predicted it would be. It was basically destined to succeed the second you two agreed to be my guinea pigs for me," Carly grinned, putting her hands on her hips proudly, "I'm in line for a huge bonus now this year, it's _great_."

"Because of one article?" Judai wondered, feeling like there was more to that story since someone usually didn't just get a bonus for doing a _single_ thing like that.

"Okay, to be fair, our company was starting to develop a poor reputation but I and a couple other people have basically turned that image around over the course of the last year, so it's more about that than anything else. So it's that article plus all the other ones I've put out this year," Carly explained, smiling proudly to herself - it was well-deserved pride if what she said was true, which Judai had zero doubt about after seeing just how good she was when she'd helped them out with the cover story.

"Good for you," Judai smiled, pausing another moment to make sure he was still going the right way before continuing to lead them down the hallways, "We should almost be there... Anyway, what're your holiday plans? Yusei's got finals and I've got work so we're stuck waiting a couple weeks still before we can really get into the swing of things."

"Aw, that sucks. I think Jack and I were planning to go look at some of the shops together, but we were waiting for us to both have a relatively free weekend to do it," Carly said, frowning a little, "I'm not actually entirely sure what I'm doing this year..."

"You're welcome to come over for Christmas if you've got nothing else planned, we'd be happy to have you," Judai suggested, raising his eyebrows at her teasingly, "I'm sure Jack would be quite happy about that, too."

"I'm sure _I_ would be quite happy about it, thanks for the offer," Carly snickered, giving him a grateful smile, "I'll get you guys great presents, just watch. You won't regret having me there, I promise."

"I look forward to it! Speaking of though, I need to start thinking about getting presents ready after all this," Judai mused, finally spotting Phoenix as he turned the next corner but deciding to finish his thought before calling out to him, "There's gonna be a whole bunch, so we gotta start early and start putting them under... the..."

He buried his face in his hands with a muffled groan, realizing _exactly_ what he'd forgotten about in all this and feeling really dumb now because of it. Yubel and Haou were laughing their asses off at him right now, and he didn't even feel the need to call them out for it because he was too busy calling _himself_ out for forgetting what was probably the most important decoration of all.

"Judai?"

"Oh, he's here. Judai- uh... what happened? You okay?"

"I can't believe I forgot to get a _Christmas tree!_ "

There was a long pause of silence before Edo started snickering and Carly broke out into full-on laughter while Judai continued to wallow in disbelief that he'd forgotten the fucking _tree_ of all things. He wasn't going to get to live this one down, he was absolutely sure of it.


	337. Finding A Tree

_**12/3/19**_

"I still can't believe I forgot the _tree_ of all things," Judai muttered a couple days later, holding on to Yusei tightly as he drove them a little bit out of the city to where a Christmas tree farm was located. He felt him laugh lightly under his grip, which prompted him to laugh a little in amusement himself.

"None of us would've remembered if you hadn't, so at least you _did_ remember," Yusei said, revving the bike a little as he came out of a turn. They were probably having a little too much fun speeding on the roads outside the city, but there weren't many others on the road since it was early morning so they decided to take advantage of it, with Judai cheering loudly from the back whenever he sped up or made a sharp turn.

"Yeah, and even then we're lucky Phoenix decided to make it easier and get us a free delivery - I have no idea how we would get this thing back otherwise," Judai grinned, thinking back to the party. Edo had gotten his fill of laughing at him and teasing him after a few minutes, at which time he pat him hard on the back and recommended this particular place to get a tree from. Apparently it was where he bulk-ordered trees from during the holidays for events, and he had plenty of discounts at his disposal to give out to anyone he wanted.

That was when Judai realized that, y'know, everyone in the apartment only had motorcycles, which weren't exactly conducive towards hauling a tree back home. Needless to say he took the offered free delivery immediately once Edo suggested it, and endured the teasing remark from Carly that it better be all lit up and pretty when she came over.

Which, of course, was another thing they needed to do - buy lights and ornaments and a tree topper. Judai still wasn't sure exactly what kinds he wanted (which he only says because Yusei had already made it clear to him that he did not care what they were, just that he was happy with how they turned out), he just knew that he was starting completely from scratch. He vaguely remembered having some custom ornaments for certain things during the holidays in his childhood where they actually had a tree set-up, and he really liked the idea of it. It was just a matter of figuring out _what_ things he wanted the custom ornaments of and/or for.

They reached the place pretty quickly since it wasn't too far out from the city, and after they'd both gotten off and taken off their helmets, they stopped to look at the horizon of snow-covered trees. It was quite the pretty sight, and when combined with the fresh, crisp, and cold air that accompanied it, it was just a pleasant experience overall.

"Well then, shall we? I'm pretty sure we just go in and start wandering, and then go get someone once we find the one we want," Judai stated, giving Yusei a smile and threading their hands together once he got a nod and a smile in return.

The different areas were clearly labelled with what height and what kind of tree the section had, and the paths in-between each of the sections were wide and made it very easy to tell them apart. The trees themselves were all clumped together randomly and a little hard to get around sometimes, but navigating the sections? Easy.

"How tall do we want it to be anyway?" Judai wondered, glancing between a couple of the signs around them, "We've got a lot of room for it, but I don't think we want it to be _too_ tall."

"Probably no higher than the stairs go..." Yusei mused, tilting his head cutely as he studied the trees around them - Judai couldn't help but grab his attention with a light tug on his arm and lean up to give him a quick peck on the lips, grinning at the immediate smile it brought to his face, "Love you, too. Also, go with no higher than eight feet, please."

"Got'cha! Can do," Judai winked, tugging him off to look through the seven foot trees nearby first, "Come on, let's go! If you see any that look good to you just tell me and we can compare."

"Alright, just don't complain when the ones I pick aren't what you're lookin' for," Yusei warned, nudging him playfully in the side, "You're the one that's picky about how it looks."

"Damn right I'm picky, only the best tree for us! Speaking of which, I guess I should explain what's considered 'good' to you..." he realized, giving him a sheepish look and laughing when he got a couple eskimo kisses to the face in response.

"Yeah, that'd probably be for the best."

It took a while for them to find the tree, along with a couple incidents where they bumped into a tree and got a load of snow dumped onto them as a result, but they did eventually find one - it even got the Yubel-stamp-of-approval when she decided to actually come out for once to look. Now it was just a matter of actually finding someone to help them get it tagged and cut...


	338. Putting Up Lights

_**12/4/19**_

"Hmm... maybe move it just a little more to the right?" Yusei wondered, trying to tell Judai where to move his hand so that they could finish decorating the Christmas tree with lights. It was going pretty well, considering they'd managed to not only get it back successfully from the company, but also been able to set it all up inside the apartment with limited interruptions from anyone - now it was just a matter of actually decorating it, which anyone could help with, but Judai still took the lead of.

When they'd gone out for tree lights, they'd initially had a pretty big discussion about what kind they'd be getting - Yusei, of course, had already told Judai that he didn't really care what he decided to get, but Judai wanted to discuss them, so discuss them they did. They discussed it so much that they ended up getting tired of trying to figure out which one was more popular, so they just bought both types that they'd been discussing, the classic fairy light type and the four-colored classic type. It wasn't like they didn't have the money to spend on it, plus then they could leave it out of their hands and let the others choose for them...

...If they chose just one, though. Turns out, both Jack and Crow had decided that the lights would look good together and that there was no reason to have to separate them on the tree, so Judai got to wrap the longer pair of lights (the fairy lights) around the tree and evenly before working with Yusei to try and do his best to evenly spread the colored ones as well.

"Damn it Crow, stop plugging it in - I know it's you!" Judai called, sounding slightly annoyed since this was the fourth time so far that Crow had decided to turn on the power to the tree, blinding them a little in the process as they tried to finish, "I _will_ go over there and make sure you can't mess with it if I have to!"

Yusei watched and listened to the interaction with a fond smile, noting that Judai was both close to getting done with the colored wires and that Crow hadn't realized this fact yet, which was why he went in with a chuckle for the fifth time after waiting just long enough to get Judai's defense down and expectations up. Judai's reaction was immediate - he shoved the last bit of wire into place, dashed out from behind the tree (which was located off to the side of the couch so that it was to the side of the second story landing), and gave Crow no warning before suddenly a shadow was shooting out of the kitchen wielding some ice cubes.

Needless to say, Crow yelped at the sudden cold down his shirt, struggling to get rid of it considering the jacket he was wearing, while Judai laughed his ass off at him.

"...I was going to do the same thing as Crow, but I'm seriously having some second thoughts now," Jack admitted, grumbling a little next to Yusei as they watched Crow get pulled into a noogie, which didn't help him get the ice out from under his shirt in the slightest, "I'd rather not get ice shoved down my shirt."

"Judai! I'm sorry- is that more?! Why?!"

"Do you know how much it hurt my eyes when you kept turning them on?! I'm literally only a few inches away from them, not a foot, you dumbass!"

"Yeah, well, you're fine now, aren't you?!"

Yusei whistled lowly, smiling in amusement as they continued to argue - they weren't actually mad at each other, clearly, but it was hilarious to watch, and he replied, "That's probably a good idea. He wouldn't stop until he managed to do it, too, so it would be a guarantee." He decided to shuffle through the various other boxes of lights they'd bought just in case they needed the extra, putting them in a neat pile so they could decide what to do with them now that they'd finished the tree. He wasn't entirely sure _what_ they would use them for, though... maybe the kitchen window or their window or something? It sounded like it might be fun to have some colored lights strung up to light up the dark at nighttime...

It was a bit of a shame that they didn't really have an outside wall to work with, considering the way the apartment building was constructed, but they'd make up for it by doing all that they could with the inside. Yusei was enjoying it quite a bit, to be honest, since they hadn't exactly done much in the way of decorating last year - they'd been content with just knowing it was the holiday season for the most part, happy that they were finally back to having some semblance of a peaceful, normal life. It was why Judai had to start basically from scratch with decorations and setting-up everything, but it was a lot of fun going around and finding all the stuff with him.

Yusei only realized he'd zoned out for a moment too long when he was suddenly latched into hug by Judai and pulled backwards a bit, with Crow digging through the pile of lights he'd just made and picking out one of the fairy light boxes. Jack seemed to be in on whatever they were planning too, watching with a wide smirk from the side and sipping eagerly from his coffee cup.

"Weren't you two busy fighting about something just now...?" Yusei asked tentatively, growing wary of the increasingly mischievous smiles on everyone's faces - this was going to end in something embarrassing for him, wasn't it?

"Well, dear, I happened to remember something far more interesting to do - plus I already got my revenge on Crow, I'm good," Judai chirped in reply, snickering a little at the exasperated sigh Crow gave at the last bit, "But anyway, do you remember promising me to let me try to hand lights from your hair? Because you _did_ , and guess what time it is!~"

Honestly, he should've realized by now that Judai _never_ forgot when it came to things like this - it just never happened, and he needed to stop being surprised every time by it. He hoped he was satisfied with getting plenty of pictures of him being embarrassed, because as it turned out, the lights really _did_ stay in his hair after a bit of fiddling around with them, which was not what he'd expected to happen _at all_ \- he could tell Judai was more than satisfied later, though, when he got a peek at his phone and it was already his wallpaper.


	339. Party Invite

_**12/5/19**_

Judai yawned as he found himself suddenly awake, noting that it was still early morning, judging solely from the little bit of soft light that came in through the window. It wasn't too unusual for him to wake up like this sometimes, especially more recently considering he and Yusei had fallen into routine while making sure not to stay up too late mainly to instill good habits, but it was still a rare enough occurrence for him to be a little thrown-off by it.

At least it was nice and warm under the sheets, which was something he took the time to soak in as he curled a more into Yusei, chuckling quietly when he looked at him and found him drooling just a little bit on the pillow with his mouth ever-so-slightly open; he took measures to make sure he was safe from it at least by moving down a bit so he was hugging his waist, head resting against his chest. It was nice to just listen to the other's heartbeat for a bit while he enjoyed the quiet peace of early morning.

Eventually, though, that quiet peace was interrupted by a short little buzz from his phone on the side table, so he mentally prepared himself to go out into the cold air before quickly moving out from under the covers to swipe it away. He snuggled back under the covers, arms settling back into the warmth the most out of everything, before unlocking his phone and checking the notification, which turned out to be an email.

Not just any old email from the looks of it, either, considering it was from Asuka and apparently sent to pretty much everyone in the group. Both Yubel and Haou perked up at the stray thought, paying attention more consciously to what he was doing and reading it aloud in his head with him.

" _A holiday party, huh?_ " Yubel hummed, " _Looks like a lot of people will be going._ "

" _...The crocodile man will be there, apparently,_ " Haou quietly noted, which wasn't surprising to either of them - it was an open secret between all of them that he actually respected Jim quite a bit now that he wasn't being influenced at all by anything and could look back at everyone's actions from the time with an open mind. Of course, it was _supposed_ to be a secret because this was Haou and he was too embarrassed to ever admit to such a thing, but he didn't exactly hide it from the two of them either.

 _He'll be coming with Johan from the looks of it_ , Judai replied, not speaking out loud just in case he accidentally woke Yusei up - if he'd just gone to sleep he would've been fine with talking, but it was early morning and he had a feeling that if he made much noise it'd wake him up. It was close enough to when they usually got up that it was a strong possibility, so he wasn't going to take the chance.

" _Ooh, and that one smart kid'll be there too!_ " Yubel pointed out, drawing his attention to Daichi's reply to the original email - everyone had just replied so far to the entire group with their confirmations, so they could tell who was able to go so far, " _Along with the girl... Rei, right?_ "

 _Yeah, that's Rei_ , Judai confirmed, suddenly reminded of the fact that the two were apparently, again, _married_? Looks like he'd get the chance to ask, at least - he had a feeling there was a long-winded story to be told there, and he knew Rei could get into long story-telling tangents if you let her, so he'd get the whole thing in one go.

Hell, at least she would most definitely tell him, whereas Asuka seemed to enjoy tormenting him with curiosity as to how she and Jun got together.

He double-checked the date of the party before setting a reminder for it on his calendar, making another notification to pop up later today so that he didn't forget to tell Yusei about it. It was set a few days after finals were over for him, so they'd probably be going, but he just wanted to make sure it actually was before sending the email out to confirm it.

For now though, he made the quick venture outside the blankets and sheets to put his phone back on the table (making sure to drop it quietly just in case as well) before closing his eyes again and leaning into Yusei, deciding to just spend the rest of the morning lightly dozing; he really loved how winter time made it easy to cuddle and relax with him thanks to the temperature being just right for it, especially in the extra-chilly morning.


	340. Candy Presents

_**12/6/19**_

"We're invited too?" Crow blinked, pointing between himself and Jack when Judai brought it up later that day - it was the weekend at that point, so everyone had the day off (and Crow was in-between jobs). Thus, they'd all decided to have some fun dueling each other, making a few edits to their decks so they could try some new strategies without much worry about winning or losing.

Yusei decided to duel just a few times in favor of studying, which they all understood completely, but Judai had to smile internally at the fact that he was doing it in the living room with them; he was taking the time to hang-out, not letting himself get fully pulled into the textbooks and his notes, which was a nice change in pace from the usual deep-dive studying he did.

"Yup, you guys are - oh, and Carly, too," Judai replied, waving his cards idly towards Jack, "Phoenix met her last week at one of the parties, I'm sure she's told you about that."

"Oh she definitely did," Jack drawled, looking highly amused as he remembered whatever conversation they'd had about it, "I got to hear all about how you forgot the Christmas tree and how utterly _mortified_ you were."

Both Crow and Yusei smirked at this, considering the overly dramatic announcement Judai had made the night he got back from the party that they needed to get a tree was still fresh in their minds. Honestly, Judai was sure at this point that his fate was sealed and that he wouldn't live it down for years to come.

"I swear to the gods I'm never, _ever_ going to be able to forget it again," Judai muttered, his own smile coming unbidden to his face since it _was_ pretty funny in hindsight, "It's just impossible for me to."

"Don't worry, we'll make sure to remind you every November," Crow teased, getting sounds of agreement from the other two while Judai just groaned and mock-glared at all of them before bringing his mug of tea up to drink from and hide behind, "Anyway... do we need to uh, bring presents or anything?"

"Well, you don't really know them that well, so I wouldn't say you need to... but if you feel more comfortable with it, I can get you a list of candies and you can run down to that one old candy shop near the bridge. I know everyone's favorites and no one's going to say no to candy," Judai replied, figuring that would work well - he would already be making food to bring, and those two didn't really know everyone as well as, say, Yusei did (hence why the presents they'd be making would be from both him _and_ Yusei, not just because they were a couple).

"Ooh, that's a good idea! Alright, just get the list to us whenever you can, and Jack and I can run down there to get some," Crow chirped, nudging Jack in the side with a grin.

Jack stared at him with a blank look, saying, "Who said I would go with you?"

"I did!"

"Bastard, who's to say I wouldn't go with Carly, or by myself or something?"

"Oh, even better! All three of us can go together and split the cost since we're all going to the party!"

They quickly devolved even further into their little argument, fully turning to face each other with Jack grumbling in-between sentences half the time and Crow having a permanent smirk on his face. Judai and Yusei shared a look, both of them looking back and forth between the argument and each other while holding back their laughter as best they could - Yusei had fully put down his pencil and papers at this point, leaning back in his chair for a bit to just watch and listen to the entertainment, which was some Judai was quick to replicate by putting down his hand.

It'd probably be a while until Crow was ready to finish their duel, so Judai simply passed the time whispering with Yusei and stealing a few kisses when he was sure no one was looking at them.


	341. Holiday Cookies

_**12/7/19**_

"Well, look who finally came out of hiding," Judai teased, smiling as Yusei entered the kitchen where he was currently in the middle of baking a variety of things - some regular sugar cookies were requested by none other than Yusei himself (even if he didn't _explicitly_ say that he wanted them, but it was painfully obvious to Judai that he did), and he had some breads in the process of finishing up in the oven.

"More like there's not much else for me to study, so I had to," Yusei sighed lightly, returning the smile and moving over to watch him put cookie dough on the tray in front of him, "I just wish finals didn't have such an odd schedule..."

"Yeah, it kinda sucks that you have to go over the course of the week," Judai agreed, pausing and putting down the bowl of cookie dough he was pulling from before leaning on Yusei in a mock-hug, not wanting to put his doughy hands on him and get him dirty, "And for what, two extra hours tacked on to every class?"

"That's correct. And it's spread out over the week too, so I'll still be gone all day, even if I'm only really going to one or two classes every time," Yusei added, having none of the same problems he was having with wrapping his arms around him and leaning down to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, "Enough about that, though... I think if I focus anymore on class for now I'm just going to stress myself out."

"Definitely don't want that to happen," Judai murmured, smile growing a little softer as he looked up at him before turning back to what he'd been doing, "Want to help me out here? I've got another tray ready to go, it just needs the dough to be put on it."

"I'd be happy to," Yusei replied, going over to the sink to wash his hands without Judai having to say a word about it, which Judai was quite happy about. Yusei did his best to help out when he could, and Judai appreciated the effort, but drilling into him that he needed to wash his hands first was harder to do than he thought it'd be - he had a feeling that it was because Yusei was so used to wearing gloves all the time that he wasn't used to _not_ having them on, along with all the other things he had to do that came with it.

He wasn't saying that he was unclean or unsanitary at all, but basically? Yusei just hadn't worked with food enough to drill the rule of having clean hands into his brain. He was fine when it came to other topics where one had to wash their hands, but cooking just... took a lot of extra time, for whatever reason, since it just never seemed to click in his brain. Either way though, Judai seemed to have finally succeeded in his mission to do so, and he silently cheered to himself about the accomplishment.

"You remember how to do it from last time?" Judai asked, remembering that he'd helped him out a little when he'd been making the Halloween-decorated cookies - he hadn't really been planning on icing the current ones, but remembering their little decoration contest they'd had made him want to do it again but for Christmas stuff instead. He was pretty sure he had all the food dye he needed (though he swore he remembered thinking last time that he was starting to run low on a certain color), and making icing just took a lot of powdered sugar and a few other things, which he had an abundance of...

" _It was red_ ," Haou decided to helpfully supply, which caused him to perk up at both the reminder and the fact that Haou had helped.

 _Oh! That's right, it_ _ **was**_ _red!_ Judai realized, internally sending feelings of gratefulness through the connection. Now that he remembered, it was red he was 'missing', in that he had one little dropper bottle left of it - of course, that would make a ton of red or pink or whatever combination color icing he needed, but it was always good to keep his stock up.

"I remember. I just roll it into a ball, right? Twelve on a sheet," Yusei replied, pulling out some dough after rolling up his sleeves (which Judai did _not_ stare at in appreciation as he did so, of course, he would _never_ ) and doing exactly as he'd said. He held it up for him to look at once he was finished, and Judai smiled and nodded in approval at the ball, which was a little on the small side but otherwise perfect.

When it finally came time to decorate, Judai quickly whipped up a couple different colors of icing before grinning at Yusei in challenge, who seemed to have realized what was happening the second he'd started adding color to the icing and was totally down for another icing competition.

Needless to say, they tied again and ultimately, their stomachs won when they couldn't stand not eating some of the sugar cookies they'd decorated... though Judai was just glad Yusei was able to relax before his exams started the next day, and that was the real win of the night to him.


	342. Texts Before Dinner

_**12/8/19**_

 _Gearhead 3: im finally out_

 _Gearhead 3: please tell me theres food at home_

Judai grinned down at his phone, snickering at how tired Yusei must be to not be sending everything in one text like he usually does - he was very much the type to write out his full thoughts before sending a message, though it was hit-or-miss on whether or not he used apostrophes... he was pretty sure he didn't use auto-correct, at least. He did have to wonder how in the world he managed to use his very much touch-based phone while wearing leather gloves though, which he hadn't actually noticed before now.

 _Wait, what the hell?_ Judai realized, the oddness of that idea slowly starting to sink in, _Is he a wizard or something? How the actual fuck does he use these things with not just gloves on, but_ _ **leather gloves**_ _?!_

Sure, Yusei had his gloves off half the time if he was being honest, but this was different because now that Judai was thinking about it, he was going through past memories and realized that he'd even watched him do it while they were out and about. He might understand it more if those were super-thin gloves, but they weren't, which he knew from trying them on himself a couple times when he got curious... which was another story in itself because it had really cemented how much bigger Yusei's hands were than his own, but he could dwell on that later.

He'd just have to make a mental note for now to investigate the matter later, too.

 _HERO: there is, dont worry the hero would never let you starve!_

 _HERO: hurry home so i can feed you_

 _HERO: you sound tired even in texts_

 _Gearhead 3: what_

 _Gearhead 3: you cant hear texts though_

And that's how Judai knew that Yusei had to be _really_ tired from taking those exams - two classes nearly back-to-back with four hour time-slots each for their exams, and it was only the first day of the week. He still had four to get through, though luckily two of those days only had one class each. Judai still maintained that Yusei was both nuts and proving his genius by taking eight gods-damned high-level college courses in one semester, which he only got approved by the school to do in the first place because of his status and workplace (which was the government, basically). Well... almost eight high-level courses, to be fair, since a couple of them were actual general education stuff the college absolutely refused to budge on, so he was forced to take them.

 _HERO: on second thought, hurry home so you dont have to use your brain anymore_

 _HERO: i think its melted_

 _Gearhead 3: okay?_

 _HERO: dear read what i said before_

 _HERO: then read what you said in response_

While he waited for Yusei's response, he put down the phone and checked on the noodles in front of him, which seemed to be just about ready to go - he was making spicy stir-fry, which was one of Yusei's favorite dishes (even if the gear-head didn't necessarily realize it himself), though he was making sure to add some extra protein and such to it to make it as energizing as possible. Yusei was going to need every little bit of brain power he could get, it seemed, which he'd luckily predicted the other day when he'd gone out on a grocery run to restock.

One did not simply power through studying for and taking eight exams without burning out at some point, even with someone like Yusei.

He took the noodles off the heat and strained them out, letting them sit for a little while he shook the pan still on the stove that had some oil and a mix of chicken and beef on it, noting that it needed another minute or two since he'd put it on a bit late. At this point his phone ran again though, and he eagerly picked it back up to see if Yusei had been able to understand what he was amused with.

 _Gearhead 3: well shit_

 _Gearhead 3: you might be onto something about my brain_

Judai snorted at that, trying and failing to hold back more laughter at the reaction that was just so out of place on Yusei, yet made perfect sense with the context of everything. He only just barely managed to remember the meat on the stove before it burned because he was too busy reading over those texts and grinning about how utterly adorable his gear-head was.


	343. Comparisons

_**12/9/19**_

It came to mind one day, while Judai was sitting and had some time to just draw while Yusei was still off and stuck taking the rest of his finals, just how different this Christmas was compared to how he'd spent it last year. Hell, last year's Christmas was a bit of a blur, but at least he'd been able to celebrate a little bit... in his own mind.

Last year at Christmas was when he'd been on the breakthrough point for travelling through time, and even though he was kinda fond of that time period now, he was infinitely happier with being able to spend it with friends and Yusei instead of in a random (not-so-random, actually, since it'd taken literal _ages_ for him to find) plane of the spirit dimension with only himself, Yubel, and Haou. Successfully jumping through time was practically his late Christmas gift to himself, at that point.

"I don't think I could've imagined life right now if I'd tried back then," Judai mused quietly, feeling Yubel and Haou stir in agreement as his pencil lightly stroked the page. He was determined to sketch out the picture he wanted for the presents and the recipes, and he had a feeling that it was going to take a couple of tries before he was fully satisfied with what he'd drawn. It'd probably help if he had a solid idea of exactly what food the kit would be for, considering they were still tentatively deciding between a couple of things that could actually utilize a kit like that, but he had a generic idea of what the design could be at least so he worked with that.

" _Last Christmas was when you found the stupid place, remember?_ " Yubel recalled, sounding slightly amused yet pained due to the nature of that particular memory - Judai knew exactly why once she mentioned it, though, because finally finding the place where he could discover how to time travel also came with him getting knocked out from behind before he could see much more of it. It was a pretty tense couple of days after that, mainly for Yubel and Haou since Judai wasn't actually conscious half the time and the duel spirits who'd knocked him out kept keeping him out with magic, but it'd ultimately been a good thing in the end since he was deemed safe.

" _I still can't believe you got knocked out,_ " Haou said, the words almost bitter on his tongue but also laced with a teasing tone, " _From behind, no less. And then kept under for three days._ "

"Well, it ended up being fine in the end, didn't it?" Judai smiled, feeling a little sheepish when the other two audibly sighed in response, "Okay, you two are exaggerating just a little! Besides, we got here in the end, didn't we?"

" _You are_ _ **so**_ _lucky that those Time Thief spirits are well-mannered and nice for the most part, disregarding the mind-walking they did,_ " Yubel stated, which... yeah, Judai couldn't counter that with anything because she was right. Hell, half the reason why he wasn't kicked out or anything like that ended up being because one of the higher-ups there was an absolute sucker for 'true-love' stories, and him wanting to travel through time to be with Yusei fit the bill perfectly in that regard.

He wasn't dead and he got approved for time travel, which is all he really cares about in the end. And now, roughly a year later, he's getting to spend his first Christmas in... a really long time, actually, with not just the love of his life but all his old and new friends, too.

As he sketched out some smiling expressions on the page, he smiled as well, knowing that he was finally, truly happy now after what felt like years of turmoil and feeling lost. It was a nice feeling, and he could feel Yubel and Haou's feelings line up with his in contentment.

...He felt like hugging Yusei now, damn it. Thank the gods he'd be home in an hour or so because he'd only had one class that day, or else Judai was sure he'd have started getting fidgety from waiting.


	344. Presents for Two

_**12/10/19**_

Figuring out presents for all their friends had luckily been pretty easy, but Judai was having quite the opposite experience when it came to finding a present for Yusei. He knew what he liked, but none of it felt... right? He felt like it needed to be special somehow, yet every time he thought that he grew a little more uneasy.

He caught himself frowning before Yusei could notice from where they were working together on said presents for friends. Yusei had finally finished with his finals, and after sleeping-in for as long as they wanted that morning after to celebrate they had gotten almost straight to work on it. Judai had bought all the jars they needed while Yusei'd been busy, making sure to buy a few extra just in case one broke or something, and he'd finally decided on a design - he just needed to personalize it now for whatever recipe they decided on, which they'd narrowed down to two choices at this point.

 _Am I overthinking this?_ Judai asked, slowly realizing just how worried he was getting over figuring out Yusei's present. It couldn't be a good thing to be stressing out this much over it, right? But it also shouldn't be that hard to figure out...?

" _Judai, dear, have you thought about just_ _ **asking**_ _him what he wants?_ " Yubel replied, letting out a little exasperated sigh as she did so. Clearly this was something obvious he was missing, then.

 _Isn't it supposed to be like, a surprise though?_ He countered, though he still took Yubel's words to heart and mulled over them. It still felt counter-intuitive to ask him what he wanted, since then there wasn't much surprise to whatever he ended up getting him, but he could see how it would make it easier.

" _Well, think of it like this_ ," Yubel started, going into one of her oddly serious tones for a moment, " _You either stress out and worry about it, or you ask and know for sure what he'd want. He might not even_ _ **want**_ _a present like the kind you're thinking of - it's simpler than you're making it, at the very least._ "

There wasn't much Judai could say to that - she wasn't wrong in any regards, and hell, maybe he was just too caught up on the whole 'surprise' part of it. Now that he thought about it, didn't it matter more that Yusei liked the present than that he was surprised by it?

Priorities really mattered here, and he wasn't thinking about them at all.

 _Thanks, I needed that,_ Judai sighed internally, making sure to send his gratitude through before leaning over on Yusei to get his attention. He watched and waited for him to finish what he was doing at the moment before actually speaking up, though.

"Hey, Yus?" He asked, continuing when Yusei turned to look at him questioningly, "What do you even want for Christmas anyway?"

The blink of surprise he got in return was all he really needed to see to know that Yusei hadn't even thought about it yet, which honestly wasn't surprising in the least to Judai - Yusei wasn't really the type to think about what he'd like as presents since he never really expected presents in the first place, for anything. It made him feel a lot better about asking actually since it would get the other thinking about what he wanted, and that was half the battle won then, because even if Yusei said he was fine with anything now he'd probably be more specific later after some more mulling over the topic.

"I'm not... really sure," Yusei eventually replied, tilting his head just a little bit in that cute way Judai loved before tentatively continuing, "Honestly though? I think... I think I'd like something we could either do or use together. Is that weird?"

Okay, never mind, Yusei had surprised the crap out of him with that one. He hadn't been expecting _that_ of all answers, especially not so immediately after being asked, but he couldn't deny that the idea brought a smile to his face and made his heart swell with love and fondness for him.

"That's not weird at all! I actually really like that idea, to be honest," Judai quickly assured, wrapping him in a hug and looking up at him with a happy, quirked grin, "If that's what you want, then I'm gonna find the best goddamn presents for it!"

Yusei caught him in a kiss, looking a little relieved afterwards with the smile he gave him in return, "Should I do the same for you?"

"Yeah, like I said - I really like the idea of getting presents for each other that we can both use together," Judai stated, mind already spawning a few present ideas right off the bat - it was so much easier to figure out something with _this_ as the guideline instead. He was so glad he'd asked Yubel for advice now.

"I see that look on your face, don't go too overboard..."

Judai smiled sheepishly at him, and Yusei just sighed playfully before leaning down for another, much longer-lasting kiss.


	345. Christmas Cards

_**12/11/19**_

Yusei'd initially forgotten thanks to the relief of finally being done with finals and all of that, but now that he'd gotten some time to relax he remembered the question he'd meant to ask Judai. It wasn't exactly _important_ , he supposed, considering the nature of it, but it was just something he was curious if they should do.

"Judai, did we want to put cards with the presents or no?" he asked, in the middle of printing out the finished recipes they'd both worked on making. They'd finally decided on doing jars for cookies - the other option they'd been stuck on was hot cocoa, but they pretty much just flipped a coin to decide on it. Judai had then, of course, needed to figure out exactly _which_ kind of cookies to make the jars for and had eventually decided on peppermint s'mores cookies.

Don't ask Yusei, he didn't even know what the hell a s'more _was_ before his Kuriboh had suggested it. Judai had floundered a bit when he asked what it was, then promptly dragged him to the kitchen, lighting up the stove and proclaiming that he was extremely glad it was an open flame before enlightening him as to what s'mores were; he ended up really liking them, even if they were a bit messier than he was used to, but he supposed that was part of the charm of it. Plus, he got to tease Judai a bit by poking him with sticky marshmallow fingers, which led to sweet kisses and a bit of a poking fight that ended with both of them needing to wash marshmallow bits out of their hair.

He had to wonder how someone even thought of roasting marshmallows and squishing it between graham crackers and chocolate in the first place, though. Judai had explained it was mainly something of a camping tradition, but it was a super popular dessert treat regardless.

Either way, they'd made the recipes and matching tags to put on the jars, making sure to buy some nice, thick paper to print them on so it looked better. Honestly though, Yusei thought they'd look amazing even without that extra little touch because Judai's drawings really made the tags and recipes pop thanks to the various little Winged Kuriboh's and Junk Synchron's he'd created - the Kuriboh held up ingredient pictures while Synchron appeared throughout the various directions, and at the top they both flanked the title with animatedly happy looks.

"Ah shit," Judai realized, groaning a little as he face-palmed, "Another thing I forgot. Thanks for the reminder, we need cards not just because they're Christmas cards but because we need to put the recipes in them."

"Don't thank me, thank the people I overheard exchanging cards going between classes," Yusei laughed, giving him a little smile, "I think at this point we should just go to the store and buy a bunch rather than try and make more. The party's in only a few days."

"You're right, at least we made the other stuff," Judai agreed, hugging him and burying his head in his shoulder after wrapping his arms around him in a hug - it was at just the right place that Yusei knew if he wasn't currently wearing a hoodie, he'd have accidentally startled from the other's face tickling him then been subjected to more purposeful tickling.

He returned the hug, resting his own head on top of his and humming lightly in satisfaction - Judai was being a living heater as usual, and it was much appreciated thanks to how cold the apartment was. He'd ended up being a lot more touchy recently than usual as a result (which was saying something, to be honest), but he couldn't help but want to steal all that warmth constantly, which also always came with bonus hugs and kisses.

 _Should I get him a card?_ Yusei suddenly wondered, feeling a bit uncertain about it considering what they'd already discussed regarding getting presents for each other. That conversation had actually been a huge relief to him because he'd honestly been having the exact same crisis Judai'd had, but he'd been a bit too nervous to bring it up yet - he'd found a little present for him by that time, but it wasn't too much and after having that discussion he was actually going to give it to him before they went to the party so he'd get more use out of it.

He probably didn't need to get a card, but just to be safe, he'd include a little note in the tags on whatever he ended up buying him. It held the same sentiment and was a good enough compromise for him to ease his worries about it almost completely.


	346. Mistletoe

_**12/12/19**_

Judai had run out to go get more ingredients since they had accidentally bought too little for the presents and ran out, telling Yusei to just sit tight and wait since it wasn't very far - in the meantime he was finishing putting all the tags and stuff together, finally getting around to signing the cards they'd gotten as well. Crow and Jack were hanging out downstairs with him as well, having gone out to the candy store and getting the entire list that Judai'd written out for them before returning roughly thirty minutes ago; they'd gotten some medium-sized, Christmas-themed bags to put them in, so they'd basically domineered the coffee table by spreading out all the candy they'd bought in order to make it as organized as possible. Thankfully Yusei wasn't affected since he'd already set himself up in a chair in the living room, an unfold-able side table in front of him to write on - he hadn't wanted to work at the desk since it faced the wall and he would rather be able to talk to the others easily.

He mentions them because... well, Yusei could tell his brothers were up to something. It was _painfully_ obvious considering the smug smirk that occasionally twitched at the edges of Jack's mouth, along with the almost permanent-looking, 'innocent' smile on Crow's face. Plus, they kept glancing at each other as if there was some sort of funny, inside joke, eyes glinting every time they did so.

"Do I want to know what you two are up to?" Yusei drawled, pausing in his signing when he saw them exchange amused looks again.

"Who ever said we were up to something?" Crow replied, 'innocent' smile turning ever-so-slightly less innocent on accident in response - if it wasn't already clear to him that they most definitely were up to something, then it certainly was now.

"Uh-huh, sure, act like you don't know what I mean," Yusei stated, raising an eyebrow at them when even _Jack_ tried to put on an innocent-looking face, "Your guys' poker faces are _awful_."

"Just go back to signing your stuff," Jack said, huffing a little afterwards as he plopped another candy into the current bag he was holding, "Damn it, we're not even half-way done."

"We only started twenty minutes ago, you crybaby," Crow snorted, not dodging the light smack that hit his upper arm, "Hey!"

"You're seriously calling _me_ a crybaby? And then you go and flinch at that, I barely even touched you," Jack asked exasperatedly, not able to dodge the responding light smack that was given either, "Fuck you."

"I've bagged more than you, I'm currently winning," Crow hummed, clearly egging Jack on but succeeding at doing so anyway considering how Jack immediately tried to pick up his speed. It only made the bag a little more wrinkly though, not looking quite as nice as the others, and all three of them stared at the end result with varying levels of exasperation.

"...This one's Manjoume's," Jack eventually decided, tossing his haphazardly into the box they had to store them in. Both Crow and Yusei snickered at that, then watched in great amusement as he went back to bagging candy at the pace he was going at before.

About ten minutes later, the door opened to reveal that Judai was back already, bags in hand filled with flour, graham crackers, and other various things they needed for the recipe, "I'm back! Yusei let's get this stuff done now, then we can actually make a batch for ourselves since I was forced to buy so much extra - why can't things come in smaller amounts?"

"Because then they'd get less money-"

"It was a rhetorical question, dear."

This time it was Crow and Jack snickering in the background, though Yusei just rolled his eyes with a smile and went to follow Judai into the kitchen, though he paused upon seeing something that was not there before in the kitchen entry-way.

Mistletoe.

Judging from the quiet cackles that came from behind him, this was his brothers' doing and what they'd been laughing to themselves about the last thirty minutes.

It wasn't too high in the entry-way, but considering Judai had been looking down at his bags the whole time, he hadn't seen it... and then he _paused in the entry-way_ to look at him.

 _Damn it Judai_ , Yusei sighed internally, hearing the cackles grow just a little louder at how perfectly this had gone for them, _You just_ _ **had**_ _to stop there, didn't you?_ Nevertheless, he was fine with taking the opportunity and moved to stand next to his cute Kuriboh - he was hoping the other two didn't have their camera with them, but that was probably just wishful thinking at this point.

"Yusei?" Judai asked, blinking confusedly as he stopped in the entry-way next to him and simply pointed up to get him to look, "Huh...? What's up- O-oh." His face heated up just a little bit, but it was cute to see him get embarrassed by such a thing - Yusei was a little flustered himself, but he attributed that more to his brother _setting this up_ than the actual tradition itself, which was what caused Judai to be so.

Still, Yusei was a gentleman, so despite flustering Judai a bit more by slowly and gently brushing some hair away from his face first, he leaned down and made the kiss quick - like hell was he going to give them any extra seconds to possibly take a picture of them. They were quick to hide in the kitchen after, out of sight of the living room, where Yusei proceeded to tease his adorable boyfriend about getting so embarrassed about it, hugging him tightly and feeling both their hearts beating just a little faster than usual.

"I completely forgot mistletoe was a _thing_ ," Judai eventually squeaked out, burying his burning face into Yusei's shoulder, "It completely caught me off guard."

"Huh, so if I want to get this kind of reaction from you I need to catch you off guard? Good to know."

"Yusei-!"


	347. Santa Hats

_**12/13/19**_

The day before the party, Haou decided he wanted to have a day out, which of course meant that Jack took the day off to challenge him - Yusei was glad Crow hadn't taken any jobs for that day (he'd decided to take the chance for a break thanks to the party), so he was able to help him manage the chaos just in case and make sure it didn't get out of hand.

He should've known that Crow would've had some way of making it worse, though. It was just how these days seemed to go, even if they all looked back on it later and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.

As it was, Crow had just seemed to remember something and ran up to his room for the moment, leaving Yusei with Judai's spirit on the couch and sipping at some tea while they watched Haou and Jack go head-to-head at some random strategy board game they found in the closet. Yusei was ninety percent sure that Judai had bought it, seeing as he'd never seen it before in his life, and was just one of those things that he'd maybe mentioned buying in passing before forgetting all about it - he wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, at least. It _did_ seem like the type of game they'd have fun playing though considering it seemed to have a lot of resource management and required the player to think through where they wanted to put their pieces on the board.

"Alright, I got it!" Crow announced, re-appearing as he came back down the stairs holding a bag in his hands, "I found these while I was out about a week ago, but everyone was busy then so I kinda forgot about it 'til now."

" _This ought'a be interesting_ ," Judai mused, leaning his head closer towards him - Yusei may not be able to feel him, but it was still nice to have his presence close either way and he appreciated the gesture, " _Especially if he's bringing it out while Haou's around_."

Haou slightly raised an eyebrow at him, which Yusei held back a chuckle at and simply smiled instead, before everyone put their attention back on Crow as he pulled off the little piece of tape holding the bag closed and rummaged around inside of it.

"Ta-dah!" He chirped, pulling out... Santa hats?

"You bought _those_?" Jack asked incredulously, going to say more before getting smacked lightly in the face by one of the hats that Crow threw at him to wear, "Damn it, I'm not wearing it!"

"Stop being a coward," Haou stated, gesturing for Crow to toss him one before smirking at Jack as he put it on slowly and dramatically - Yusei didn't even _know_ it was possible to put something like that on dramatically, but apparently you learned something new every day. Either way, the taunt worked exactly how it was intended to, and Jack practically slammed the hat on his head so as to not let the other one-up him.

" _H-he actually put it on?_ " Judai gaped, speechless for another moment before slowly devolving into a snickering mess, " _Oh my gods, I never thought I'd see him of all people in a Santa hat!_ "

It was, admittedly, a very funny image to see Jack and Haou, both now wearing very fluffy Santa hats, go right back to arguing and being extremely competitive over a board game. Yusei ended up getting a hat tossed to him too, and he obliged without any hassle, seeing that Crow had already donned his with a grin.

"I'll admit this wasn't my first thought of what would happen when I bought them, but I feel like this is better," Crow laughed, plopping back down in the chair he'd been using - as usual, he sat on it backwards as he was so fond of doing, and was partially the reason he was sitting on the chair instead of the couch. To be fair though, the main reason why was that he knew Judai was there watching and sitting with him on the couch, even if he couldn't see him himself.

" _Tell him he's a genius, even if it wasn't planned_."

"Judai says you're a genius anyways," Yusei repeated, turning to look fully at his cute Kuriboh, who was currently just coming down from his laughing fit. To his surprise, it seemed that Haou putting on the hat had caused one to appear on Judai as well, and he couldn't help but smile at the sight - it was just so fluffy and ever-so-slightly too big for his head, which made it even more adorable.

" _Yusei? What it is it?_ " Judai blinked, noticing that he was staring at him now.

"You've got one on now, too," he pointed out, watching with rapt attention as the other looked up in confusion and tried to feel for it; the ball at the end of the hat flopped around as he accidentally pulled it over his eyes after moving his arms too quickly downwards.

" _Ah- I guess I do! Seeing it on Haou must've made me think of wearing it_ ," Judai mused, pulling it back up and peeking out at Yusei with a grin, " _How's it look?_ "

"I'm getting a picture of you later," Yusei said simply, letting the statement speak for itself as he gave Judai a little smirk that caused him to glance away for a moment with an embarrassed-looking smile.

Honestly, it felt like doing all these holiday traditions with Judai was a Christmas present in itself.


	348. Cat Hats

_**12/14/19**_

Judai stared at Pharaoh as they were just about to leave, narrowing his eyes in such a way that told Yusei he was probably going to suggest something a little out there.

"We should bring the cat," Judai eventually stated, causing Pharaoh to look up from where he was curled up in his little corner of blankets in disdain and _glare_ at him, "Aw come on, don't you wanna see everyone again? I know they'll be happy to see you... well, the majority of them, at least."

"Judai, as much as they'd like that, I don't think Pharaoh's in the mood to sit in the storage compartment in your bag again," Yusei pointed out, laughing quietly to himself when he saw Pharaoh give him a hopeful look, "I can't imagine it's a very fun ride, and definitely not with all the stuff we're bringing this time either. He wouldn't be able to move or even sit comfortably."

"I could always hold him in my lap!" Judai retorted, pouting a little now and turning towards him instead - Pharaoh took the chance to hide himself under a blanket, only barely peeking out from under it just in case so he could see if he needed to run, "It's not like I'd drop him, that's practically impossible."

"Okay, but then how're _you_ going to hold onto me?" Yusei replied calmly, though all he got was a little smirk in return which answered his question for him as he sighed after, "...Your shadows."

"Yup!" Judai happily chirped, edging a little closer towards the cat, who was slowly backing away further into his corner.

"Will you be stable enough not to fall off if you do use those?" Yusei asked, feeling a bit bad for Pharaoh now but already knowing that since Judai apparently had his mind set on it, the cat would be at that party whether he wanted to be or not. He felt a little worse when Pharaoh poked his head out more to give him a look of utter betrayal, to which he gave him a guilty smile and a little gesture he'd sort-of made up one day with the cat that indicated he'd give him a treat; it was initially so that he didn't accidentally wake Judai up from a nap, but it got to be a lot more useful as time went on, so they stuck with that and created a couple other gestures as well for certain things.

Having a magical, intelligent cat really had its perks and it was very conducive to bonding with him. Personally, Yusei was just happy to be able to hug and pet the fluffy being whenever he wanted to since the cat loved him for spoiling him.

"Yeah don't worry, I'm good at using them for balance - it's a long story so I'll tell you later, but the gist of it is that I ended up having to use them more than a few times for getting to certain places... like walking on a thin tree trunk across a huge-ass river," Judai snickered, stretching out his arms for a few moments before slipping into focus to catch the cat as he inevitably tried to run away.

Crow re-entered the house, having gone with Jack to pack their stuff into their bikes before they left, only to find Judai holding up Pharaoh triumphantly, "Uh... do I want to know what the cat did?"

"He's coming with us," Yusei sighed lightly, grinning despite himself, "Judai's put his mind to it, it's happening."

"Damn straight he's comin'," Judai laughed, carefully adjusting his hold on Pharoah, who was just starting to lose the last of his willpower to try and escape Judai's grasp, "He's gonna get super spoiled there, but at least it'll be with friends."

"...Quick question," Crow started, getting a raised eyebrow from both Yusei and Judai before he continued, "Can I like... do you think Pharaoh would wear these kinds of things? Because I may or may not want to see him wearing a tiny little Santa hat now after what happened yesterday."

Judai stared at him in realization, slowly turning his head to look down at the cat who'd also frozen in his arms, looking at Crow with the second look of heartbroken betrayal he'd had in the last five minutes. Personally, Yusei hoped the cat considered it a much bigger betrayal than his had been because at least Crow had the _choice_ with his. His own was just an illusion of choice, considering how dead-set on the idea he could tell Judai had been.

And so, after a bit of careful maneuvering onto Yusei's motorcycle, they were off, Pharoah apparently digging his claws into Judai. Honestly, Yusei could understand the cat, but he was going to have to watch out and make sure they didn't get caught in any way - it wasn't exactly normal to have a cat on a motorcycle, after all. Plus, then he's pretty sure that Pharoah would be upset with them for making him do such a thing only to get caught in the end.

Then, as they later found out, Crow had taken a quick detour to a nearby pet shop solely so he could get a Santa hat for Pharaoh... along with a little Christmas-themed bowtie and collar because Crow evidently couldn't keep himself from buying them to see on the cat. With the amount of glaring Pharaoh was sending him, you'd have thought he killed someone, or that he himself would die from such scathing looks of betrayal.


	349. The Party Begins

_**12/15/19**_

"Okay okay, just gimme me a minute and I'll let ya down," Judai soothed Pharaoh, picking up his bag that they'd padded and put him in - he'd absolutely refused to go anywhere near a crate in the beginning, so this was their solution whenever they had to bring him anywhere, like the vet.

Yes, the vet had problems with them initially considering that sounds like a horrible thing to do, but then they tried to do it as well and half their staff got mangled attempting to catch the cat; they didn't succeed in the end, and they didn't say a word after about how they chose to transport him, because at least they gave him tons of blankets and stuff, right? Needless to say, if Pharaoh doesn't want something badly enough, then there's no way in hell he's going to let it happen to him.

The party was at Jun and Asuka's place, and judging from the multitudes of other cars parked around the house, a lot of the others had already arrived - Johan ended up being one of the first to greet them since he was outside... decorating?

Well, he supposed the house _was_ lacking some decoration. He didn't really see either of the two main occupants as the type to decorate for holidays much, so at least it made sense; he might have to help out Johan in that case, because from the looks of things he'd need some helping putting up some Christmas lights around the roof of the house.

"Hey guys! Nice to see you again, it's been a while!" Johan greeted cheerfully, finishing putting the little Christmas sign up that read 'Reindeer X-ing'. He put down his stuff before walking over, taking the bag from Judai when offered it, "You brought Pharaoh? Oh- I can help with anything else by the way, I know you said you were bringing a lot of food."

"Don't worry about that, Yusei and I can handle it," Judai stated, waving him off before petting Pharaoh lightly on the head, "And yeah, we brought Pharaoh. It was kinda a last minute decision, but we figured that a lot of people here would want to see him."

"He and Shirley can have a little reunion," Johan laughed, petting the cat as well - Pharaoh seemed to actually perk up a little when he heard that, even if it was with a bit of trepidation. She was a crocodile, after all, and even if Shirley was friendly and pretty much harmless, she was _still a crocodile_. At least the fact that she was still alive made sense considering the average life-span of one was around seventy years, and Shirley had been pretty young during their school years.

With that though, Judai went back to help Yusei out with sorting out and carrying the bags of presents and food, giving him a quick peck on the cheek when he wasn't looking and getting a quiet laugh and smile in return. He paused to wait for Yusei to finish locking up his bike before they re-joined Johan, who'd been entertaining Pharaoh for them with the help of Ruby floating at his side, who greeted Yusei once again with just as much enthusiasm as before.

"I thought I heard people out here!" A voice suddenly called from the door, which opened to reveal, of all people, Rei. If he hadn't already been shown pictures by everyone else of her and Bastion, he'd probably have done a double-take on the spot - it was _still_ weird to see her twenty years older, he was too used to thinking of her as being a kid.

"Hey Rei!" He greeted, grinning widely as he joked, "I'd wave, but I kinda have my hands full with goodies."

"Judai! Damn, you really _haven't_ aged, huh? Then again, makes sense considering the circumstances, but _still_ ," Rei laughed, holding the door open and waving them in quickly, "Guess I get to be the one to joke about how young you are for once."

"Well _shit_ , I didn't even think about that," Judai groaned, getting laughs from everyone else before another voice popped up from around the entry hall.

"Did I just hear 'Judai'?" Jim smirked, donning a different cow-boy aesthetic than usual, though Judai was pretty sure he was still wearing the same hat, "Well I'll be damned. Nice to finally see you again, mate! And this must be Yusei, nice to finally _meet_ you."

"Oh yeah! Where are my manners, nice to meet you, I'm Rei," she added on, turning to Yusei instead with an undeterred smile. She was just as talkative as before, which was nice to see since it meant that she'd managed to keep a lot of that bubbly personality.

"Nice to meet you both as well," Yusei replied, giving them both a smile before copying Judai, "Like Judai said before though, I'd shake your hand but I've kind-of got my hands full."

"Right! Okay, we'll show you where to put them and- wait, Johan, is that Pharaoh you're holding?!" Rei realized, finally seeing what was in Johan's arms when Judai moved to step forward - he'd been in the way and from her angle, wouldn't have been able to see the cat, "Aw, he's still around!"

"I said that in the group chat, didn't I?" Judai pointed out, though all he really got was a pout in return.

"Seeing him in real life compared to a picture is very different!" Rei retorted, moving past him to stand next to Johan so she could pet the cat. Pharaoh seemed to be just as alright with her as before, letting her pet him with nothing more than a little meow.

Jim sighed, looking at them with an amused look, "Alright well, I guess she's busy so _I'll_ show you where to put your stuff."

"Thanks," Yusei chuckled, blinking before turning around to Johan and asking, "By the way, Jack and Crow should be here soon. They both ended up making detours, even if we're not entirely sure _why_ Jack made one, so can you help them out when they get here?"

"Not a problem! You can count on us!" Johan replied, giving them a quick thumbs up around his grip on the cat.

This party was starting off well, and Judai was glad that they'd decided not to skip it.


	350. Shirley and Pharaoh

_**12/16/19**_

Shirley and Pharaoh's reunion was interesting, to say the least - the crocodile reacted in a way that told them she remembered the cat even after all these years somehow, and she was quite enthusiastic in greeting him. Pharaoh was wary for all of thirty seconds before finally calming down and running around the other, seemingly un-bothered by the toothy smile Shirley gave off. Everyone that was watching the interaction got a laugh though when Pharaoh was brave enough to crawl up on top of Shirley's snout, seeming to have fun going up and down as she proceeded to snap her jaws a couple times.

"Haven't seen 'er that happy with someone besides Ruby in a while," Jim laughed, stealing some candy from a bowl on the table nearby - the candy Jack and Crow had bought was almost immediately fought over and poured into a couple bowls to be scattered around the area so they were easy access.

"This is a _weird_ first introduction to crocodiles," Crow snorted from next to him, seemingly torn between amusement and disbelief. He'd clicked pretty fast with Jim, though Judai attributed that to their similar personalities. Both of them were quick to joke around and had that same aura of laid-back ease around them, with just a hint of seriousness hidden behind it.

"I relate to that statement _far_ too much," Daichi said, having also gotten along with Crow pretty quickly. It was almost immediately obvious to Judai that the man had finally managed to relax over the years, even if he'd never lost that love for math and logic, which was definitely a nice thing to see. He assumed part of it was from marrying Rei - which by the way, she'd told him the story behind so his curiosity was satisfied for once.

Apparently when she reached her mid-twenties she was absolutely done with trying to date or do any of that sort of stuff (a stark difference from her childhood, but hey, Judai knew all about how much someone could change over even just a couple years), and by that point they'd become pretty good friends because they lived in the same city; Daichi was the same way, and they ended up marrying because it worked out for both of them and they got along well enough. They pooled their assets, had a person to share life with even if they didn't necessarily love each other romantically, and were plenty happy, so all the more power to them.

"Are we still sure that Shirley doesn't have some sort of magic in her?" Judai grinned, just joining them and cracking open a soda, "Could be like Pharaoh for all we know."

"...Judai, you have _never_ mentioned anything about Pharaoh being magical before," Daichi said after a moment of silence, both him and Jim staring at him with similarly raised eyebrows, "Is this a new development or something?"

"Er... no?" Judai laughed sheepishly, Crow already snickering quietly in anticipation of their reactions, "Uh... let me put it this way, he didn't jump through time with me. He spent all his time in the spirit dimension up until a bit over half a year ago."

"And he's still alive? Perfectly healthy and energetic too... well, as much as Pharaoh usually is, at least," Jim whistled, turning back to look at the two animals again, "I think I can see where you got the idea from, then."

"Well, it's only partially because of the life-span thing. The other tell is that he actually has some amount of duel energy in him."

"Fascinating," Daichi mused, still looking rather flabbergasted but used to Judai's usual shenanigans like the rest of them at this point, "I wonder if it can be compared to the amount in smaller duel monsters."

"Well, if you want you can go over to what I'm dubbing the 'nerd corner' as of this moment," Judai smiled, gesturing towards the other room, "Yusei, Johan, and Phoenix went back into research mode the second they all met up again - last I checked Yusei was borderline ranting to them about his classes and some of the stuff he had to review."

"Good for him though, you could tell he wanted to do that with us these last few months but we just wouldn't get it the way those guys do," Crow added, looking at the trio through the doorway as well with a smile before perking up suddenly and moving his head to look at a different corner of the room, "Oh ho, Jack looks _annoyed_ , I gotta go watch this!"

As he got up and left, the remaining three of them moved to look at that corner of the room as well to see what he was talking about, only to bite back snorts of laughter upon seeing Jack in a conversation with not just Thunder, but _Rei_ as well. Asuka was off to the side looking greatly entertained by the... _conversation_ , snacking on some of the food that Judai'd brought while she did so like it was popcorn. Sho was right beside her doing the same thing, and they were were having a conversation of their own solely through glances between themselves and the trio before them so that they didn't accidentally draw their attention.

Unfortunately, they were missing Kenzan as he was busy and couldn't make it, but he did say in his email reply that he'd be shipping out presents and cards to everyone. It was a shame, but then again, Judai wasn't entirely sure if this place could handle another person adding onto the currently talking trio because that is almost exactly what he'd be doing if he were here.

"I'm going to go join the science talk over there and try to shut out the others so I don't laugh to death in the middle of it," Daichi eventually said once they'd finished sharing a couple laughs over the sight.

"Yeah, I think I'll be avoiding that area for a little bit," Jim stated, popping another candy in his mouth and crunching it almost immediately, "I've got some pretty honed danger senses and that is setting off all of them."

"Same, I'm sticking out here where it's nice and calm for now," Judai agreed, pulling out his phone and waving it around towards the cat and crocodile with a grin, "Anyway, Jim, I believe we're missing out on a perfect photo opportunity right now!"


	351. Handing Out Gifts

_**12/17/19**_

It was time for presents. It turned out about half of them had brought presents (mostly everyone who actually lived in the city, which was Judai and Yusei, Thunder and Asuka, and Johan, though Jim and Rei had also brought some), while the other half had simply shipped them out already in the mail. Either way, the presents that _were_ brought were the type that didn't need to be opened on Christmas since they weren't wrapped, so they pretty much just had a fun hour exchanging gifts and talking about them.

"Alright, so this is from both Yusei and I!" Judai announced, deciding to pass out their presents first - those jars weren't exactly wrap-able, so they hadn't bothered and had instead taped the cards they'd gotten on top of them with names. Besides, he was pretty sure everyone was going to want to bake the cookies anyway before Christmas, especially these ones.

"Ooh, we finally get to see what's in that big box," Rei grinned, her own big box of presents sitting nearby.

"I'm not sure I want to know," Jun muttered, getting a snort from half the room while Asuka lightly smacked him on the arm, "Oi, I'm just saying! Who knows what he could've come up with?"

"...I trust Yusei to _not_ let him to anything crazy," Sho replied, and Judai just watched on sheepishly as everyone seemed to agree at once.

"Guys... I'm not _that_ bad."

Yusei pat him on the head, giving him a small little smile, "Sometimes you are."

Judai pouted but eventually started snickering along with everyone else in the room before pulling out one of the jars, "Fine fine, but I promise everyone's gonna like this! I'm just gonna hand it out, you can read for yourself what it is... let's see, first one's to Asuka - in that case, Yus, can you find Thunder's for me?"

It took a minute or two, but eventually he got them all handed out. Seeing as Asuka was the first to get hers, she was the first to know what exactly it was, and from the happy grin on her face it was a good choice. Soon enough everyone else knew as well, and were excitedly chatting about it.

"Judai, this is _evil_ ," Rei laughed, holding up the jar and shaking it, "Do you see this? Do you _see_ this? If it turns out even half as good when I make it as the food you brought today it's going to be _gone_ and my stomach's going to be two times fatter."

"I don't think I'd mind if it's for this," Asuka mused, reading over the recipe at this point, "Cute drawings, by the way."

"Thanks, made those myself!" Judai grinned, partly in happiness and partly in relief that everyone really did like it. He'd already _known_ that it would go well, no one could really hate something like that as a present since it was _food_ , especially his friends, but it was still nice to have actual confirmation anyway.

"Wait, since when could you draw?" Edo wondered, his jar already put safely away to the side - hilariously enough, he seemed to be almost possessive of it, which Judai could only attribute to how often he'd eaten his food and enjoyed it.

Various others piped up with the same sentiment though, finally reaching the recipe and reading the tag on the jar after looking at the card.

"Well, it's mostly just a hobby... took a painting class for the hell of it one day and found that I liked it, so I kept with it when I could," Judai blinked, tilting his head slightly in thought, "I haven't really been able to practice until recently, though."

At that Yusei seemed to have a sudden look of realization before giving him a smile, quietly threading their fingers together when everyone got to talking about whether or not they could draw and mumbling so quiet that no one but Judai would ever be able to hear him, "I'm glad you can, now."

"Only 'cause of you," Judai mumbled back, squeezing his hand and shooting him a fond smile before tuning back into the conversation.

"I can't really draw, but I can do 3-D modeling stuff," Bastion said, taking a sip of his drink before continuing, "Mine's a hobby as well, but the figurines are fun to make, even if they're hell to print out and polish up."

"Oh yeah! You gave me that super cool Flame Wingman figure for my birthday!" Judai remembered, snapping his fingers and giving him a thankful smile, "Thanks for that, by the way. He's now sitting on display next to a couple of Kuriboh's and a Junk Synchron plush."

"Aw, that's cute," Jim smirked, leaning on the back of Johan's chair at this point, "You're like Johan here, always wanting collectibles and stuff. I swear every time I go over there's two new ones and I have no idea how they fit."

"J-Jim!" Johan complained, pushing him away with a hand on the bottom of his chin and a pout-y frown, "Not fair, you can't say you don't like those too!"

"Yeah, but regardless you're gonna run out of space eventually."

"And then you try to say 'no' to them if they try to do it while you're around but somehow end up with three more, right?" Yusei stated, catching the other two's attention. Judai knew _exactly_ where this was going, and he nudged Yusei in retaliation though it was easily ignored as the other smirked and said, "That's what Judai does, at least."

"Mate, that's exactly what Johan does too," Jim laughed, ruffling Johan's hair underneath him mercilessly, "And then they see a store or something full of old merch and it's like a kid in a candy shop."

"Exactly," Yusei nodded seriously, though the smirk on his face made it clear just who was getting the short end of the stick here.

Judai shared a look with Johan, both commiserating with each other as their significant others decided to bond over teasing the hell out of them.


	352. Card Placement

_**12/18/19**_

When they all finally got home that night, they discovered that their mailbox had been filled with a bunch of letters and a note saying that they had a bunch of boxes to be picked up at the post-office - it would seem that the other's hadn't been lying when they said their gifts should arrive soon, and it was a little ironic that they'd all appeared on the same day as the party.

"Seems they got a few for us too," Crow mused, tilting his head curiously at the note - it'd listed all four of them as having packages to pick up once the post-office was open again. It was far too late at night for them to even have a chance of it being open.

"It's probably from Edo and/or Johan," Judai stated after thinking about it for a moment, pointing at Jack and Crow in turn, "They're the ones that have the most interaction with you guys, and I wouldn't put it past Johan at least to get us _more_ presents, especially if they were too big for us to safely bring back. I'd imagine that's probably the reason Edo shipped all his presents, too."

"Guess we'll see tomorrow," Jack said, blinking for a moment at the note in Crow's hands and seeming to come to some sort of conclusion before shrugging with a restrained yawn, "Either way, I'm hittin' the hay."

"Have a nice beauty sleep!"

"Shut up Crow, beauty sleep is important. Besides, you're not one to talk, feather pluck-er."

"Oi, birds _preen_ , they don't 'pluck'!"

The lighthearted arguing continued all the way up the stairs before they both separated into their rooms, Yusei watching alongside Judai with matching levels of amusement. Afterwards he turned to face him, tilting his head in question as he held up the stack of cards in his hand - they'd decided they'd open them on Christmas Day itself rather than earlier, considering some of them were rather thick and indicated there was some sort of gift hidden inside (that or it was one of those interactive kinds of cards, which was also a possibility).

"What should we do with these?" He asked, waving them back and forth a little before smiling lightly as he poked him with the thick pile and got a little laugh in return.

Judai hummed for a moment before snapping his fingers, eyes lighting up as he thought up an idea, "Let's put 'em on the tree. There's plenty of space and it's not like they'll fall off the branches, they're too fluffy for that... unless someone runs into it of course, but that's besides the point since it would mostly be Pharaoh we'd have to worry about. He hasn't done a thing to indicate he even cares about the tree being there, much less about knocking the ornaments off or digging into the presents under it."

There weren't too many presents under it at the moment, but Yusei was sure that'd change within the next few days since Christmas was pretty much right around the corner; he knew that he, at least, had more than a couple that he'd be adding once he got the chance to wrap them. To do that, though, he'd probably have to kick Judai out of their room for a bit because he'd be wrapping presents for him too. He supposed he could always go to Starlight Junktion and do it, but it was far easier and faster to just do it at home rather than scout around the city trying to find someone that had wrapping paper or gift bags and tissue paper. Granted, even then he could just _bring_ the wrapping paper with him, but... still, the amount of effort needed for that didn't make sense when he could just do it in ten minutes and be done with it.

He did want to go there at some point in the next few days though, mainly because the place was really interesting to visit. It was still a winter wonderland, and with the addition of other, trusted duel spirits being able to visit for a bit to play in the snow it was even livelier than usual. Plus, he and Judai had promised Aleister a visit too, so they'd probably just make a day out of it.

The cards were all carefully placed on the tree, making sure that the names on them were all on the side that could be seen so it'd be easier to grab them and hand them out when the time came. Taking a step back and observing their handiwork was all they needed to do to be satisfied with the outcome - it helped fill in the empty spaces between the ornaments, which they didn't have many of.

Said empty space had actually been occupied once upon a time by candy canes, but well... when you have a cat that will eat anything they can get their paws on with reasonable allowance, they were all gone in a heartbeat. That was the only time Pharaoh seemed at all interested in the tree, and after figuring out that they wouldn't be putting anymore on for him to bite off, he quickly lost all interest once again. He thought that maybe they should get him plush candy cane as a gift.

...Wait a minute.

"Judai, I just realized something."

"Hm? What's up?"

"We need to get Pharaoh a present."

"...Dammit, you're right. That cat is _so_ spoiled, I _swear_."

The words were accompanied by a fond smile at the sleeping cat, who'd pretty much darted into his bed and blankets the second they'd gotten in the door, and quiet planning on what to get him while they got something warm to drink to end the night with before they got ready to sleep.


	353. Package Retrieval

_**12/19/19**_

There were... a lot more gifts to pick-up at the post office than they'd expected, and they all sort-of stared at the lady at the desk as she happily went into the backroom to start bringing them all out.

"...Some of these _have_ to be from our friends who're in a different city or out of the country," Crow decided, tapping the counter restlessly much to Jack's annoyance. He got his hand swatted at, but he ended up going right back to tapping after a little playful glare-off.

"So? Just means that we've got more presents, I'm not complaining," Jack stated, going to swat Crow's hand again after a moment and frowning when he got dodged, "Stop that."

" _You_ stop that," Crow muttered back, biting back a very obvious grin when he dodged yet another pass, "Then again, you can't even hit your mark."

"I hit it the first time!"

"But never again after that- ooh, another miss!"

"Guys, it is eight in the morning," Yusei grumbled, leaning on a highly amused Judai and letting out a yawn. He was more than glad that Judai'd insisted on getting him some coffee to bring with them on the way there since it was warming his hands and slowly waking him up - he still felt wiped after that party yesterday and the drink was practically heaven to him right now. When the caffeine eventually started to kick in, he'd feel even better.

Judai apparently felt the need to poke him in the cheek the next time he yawned, though, giving him a cute little twisted grin before he asked, "Still not awake?"

Yusei simply shook his head in reply, feeling a little pang of annoyance flare up at the poke before it quickly dissipated into tiredness again. He did get back at him though by leaning far more heavily onto Judai than before, the other letting out a little squeak at the sudden weight.

It took another minute or so, but soon enough the lady came back out with a box piled with presents, telling them to give her a minute to bring out the rest. After a few trips, there were a total of four boxes, all of them filled with gifts and various other colorful boxes. It was a bit surprising (they hadn't had nearly this many last Christmas, after all, but then again they'd celebrated it last year almost like an afterthought), though mainly because all four of them had set up separate mail boxes for... fan mail and such. They made public the other one, then only gave out the private stuff to people they actually knew, which meant that all of this was from their friends and such.

It was... a nice feeling. Admittedly Yusei had felt a little... sad? Upset? About everyone moving away from each other as their lives continued, but it was something he usually didn't give the time of day to think about. He had a lot of other people that were still here, and he still messaged with others who weren't like Aki and the twins, but it was still nice to get physical reminders that everyone hadn't forgotten about each other despite the distance and time apart.

"There we go!" The lady chirped, pointing to each box in turn, "Four piles, one for each of you. You guys must have a _lot_ of friends out there, thanks for the workout."

"No problem, that must be one sure-fire way to wake up in the morning," Judai laughed, picking up his own alongside the rest of them. Yusei ended up blanking for a moment on what to do with his coffee (he blamed the caffeine for not kicking in yet) before Judai gently took it and put it in his box of boxes snugly in the corner so it wouldn't fall. He'd probably have said thanks if Judai hadn't been practically smirking the whole time, clearly enjoying how tired he was; as it was he gave him a look that must've been pretty good considering the way the other broke down into snickers afterwards.

"Alright, time for obstacle number two - getting through the door," Crow stated before turning to the post office lady, "Thanks! Happy Holidays!" The rest of them echoed the sentiment, unable to wave back to her as they fit through the door one-by-one and caused the bell on top of it to spasm quite a bit as they kept pushing the door while trying not to lose their grip on the boxes.

"We did it!" Judai cheered, Crow letting out a little cheer of his own.

Jack went to kick Crow lightly in the shin but was dodged once again, though this time the glare he got in return was a lot more pout-y, "Jack, I swear, if you make me drop these..."

"Then don't drop them," Jack smirked, going for another light kick before slipping a little and barely managing to catch himself without anything falling - it was pretty close though, and Yusei could see a shadow in the corner of his eye that meant Judai was fully ready to make sure nothing bad happened just in case.

"Careful, there's black ice around some parts of here," Yusei warned, though he chuckled right alongside Judai at the irony of the situation; Crow, on the other hand, was full on laughing his ass off at it while Jack practically growled at him in embarrassment.


	354. Video Calls

_**12/20/19**_

Somehow, someway, they'd ended up in a three-way video call between the four of them, Aki, and the twins after a few group chat messages were sent to let the others know their presents had gotten to them safe and sound. Granted, it was a little hard to fit four of them in front of Yusei's laptop, so it was Yusei and Jack currently in front of the camera while Judai and Crow pitched in from a distance away, eating the rest of their breakfast while trying to keep a hungry Pharaoh away.

The cat had eaten breakfast and even gotten treats already too that morning, so he was just being his usual gluttonous self at the moment.

"Is that a tree?" Aki asked, tilting her head slightly at the camera as if it would let her move it to a better angle, "It looks nice."

"Yeah, that's a tree," Jack replied, arms crossed as he leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes, "Didn't even realize we were getting one until it was already here and set-up. Judai and Yusei just went out one day and got it without saying a word to us."

"...It may have slipped our minds," Yusei admitted, causing Aki and the twins to chuckle.

"Well, at least you got a tree! We've got one too, decorating it was fun," Lua said, reaching over to the camera and picking it up for a moment so he could point it towards the other part of their living room where the tree was - it didn't have quite as many lights on it as theirs, but it had a lot more ornaments and such along with candy canes since they could actually use them without fear of a cat eating them.

"I like taking the candy canes sometimes," Luka smiled sheepishly, leaning on the pillow that was in her lap, "Mom always replaces them, hoping we'll somehow eat through our whole stock. They kinda bought too many..."

"Kinda? More like they bought ten times as much as we needed," Lua corrected. Everyone laughed at that, trying to imagine why in the world someone would ever need that many candy canes when they weren't planning a large group even of some sort.

Suddenly Judai thought up an idea though, so to double-check he asked, "So how much would you say you have left?"

"Uh... I'd say about eighty? Maybe a hundred?" Luka replied after a minute, frowning in thought as she tried to figure out a number, "It's a lot, I know. Lua wasn't kidding when he said ten times as much as we needed."

"You could always send them to Martha's," Judai suggested once he heard the number, "I'm sure all the kids there would be happy to get some holiday candy... we need to go pay a holiday visit anyway, so you could always just come with us tomorrow or the day after."

"Oh hey, that's a great idea. The kids'll _love_ that!" Crow grinned, giving a thumbs up above his head so it was in view of the camera, "Come with us, it'll be fun! You're out of school now anyway for winter break, right?"

"Yup! Let me go ask mom!"

"H-hey, Lua wait for me!"

"They're certainly energetic," Aki chuckled, smiling at the screen before letting out a small sigh, "It kinda sucks that I can't come back for my winter break since I need to keep studying regardless, but tell Martha I say 'hi', okay?"

"We will," Yusei nodded, "Anyway, how've you been doing?"

"As well as I can be when I have to _study_ over _winter break_ ," Aki joked, not sounding too upset about it in actuality, "Other than that though, I've been meaning to ask - one of my duel spirits told me they got a message from Junk Synchron saying to go visit Starlight Junktion? The message came with a weird device and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything... dangerous, I don't know."

"Ooh, okay, I can explain that!" Judai chirped, jumping up from his chair and startling Pharaoh on accident before poking his head between Yusei and Jack, "It's super simple - the thing has two buttons; one'll open a portal to Starlight Junktion and the other will bring you back to your Rose Garden. Basically, our duel spirits loved playing in the snow so much that they made the place a winter wonderland somehow and then also figured out how to make their own portals to each other solely so they could play."

"The square's now a central hub between all of our group's realms, essentially," Yusei summed up, "You should go visit when you get the time, though if you do tell us - we'll go as well and we can all hang out. We'll even drag Jack and Crow with us too."

"Ha? I didn't agree to this," Jack grumbled, though Judai could see his lips twitching into a barely visible smile, "Not like we can _do_ anything once you do, though, since we don't have your fancy-ass magic."

"It's not _magic_ , Jack."

There was a pause before everyone realized that the twins had not only gotten back, but blankly replied along with the rest of them as a group to Jack's statement, the lingering echo of it fading a bit slower thanks to the volume of several people speaking at once.

Even Jack couldn't help but laugh at it once it really set in that they'd all replied the same exact thing at once.


	355. Spreading Cheer

_**12/21/19**_

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise!" Martha laughed as she opened the door, finding not just all three of her oldest troublemakers and Judai, but also Lua and Luka, who'd apparently last visited sometime the previous year, "How're you all doing?"

"We're doing great!" Lua chirped, holding up a box that matched the one in Luka's hands and continuing, "We brought a present, too!"

"W-we had a lot of candy canes, so we figured the others might like them," Luka added on, holding up her own as well with a small smile. Yusei only noticed now, though, that she'd barely stuttered at all the previous day when they'd all been in the video call together; either she was doing better and her parents were helping her to try and get rid of it or she simply wasn't nervous at all around the rest of them, though if he were to take a guess he'd probably say it were the former. They seemed like good parents and would probably recognize that the stutter might be indicative of something other than shyness - granted, he was sure it _wasn't_ , but checking never hurt and lessons still existed that were meant to boost confidence and improve public speaking.

"The others will love them, thank you sweeties," Martha smiled, ruffling both their heads before waving them off inside, "Why don't you go hand them out now? Everyone just had lunch not too long ago. Make sure everyone only gets one each for now, though, okay?"

"Okay!"

"Will do!"

With that the twins disappeared inside, muffled sounds of cheers coming through the hallways as the kids recognized the friends they hadn't seen in so long. All of them smiled at the sound before turning back to each other, Martha waving them all in as well.

"You all come in too, no point standing around here," she laughed, patting Jack and Crow roughly on the back since they happened to be the closest, "While you're here though, could you look at a few things for me? I think a couple of the Christmas decorations are ready to die out, so I'd like to know if I need to replace them or not."

"Sure! You know I always bring my tools wherever I go," Crow agreed, nudging Jack with a grin, "You'll help, right?"

"Of course I'll help," Jack muttered, looking rather subdued for now, "Who do you take me for?"

"How're you doing though, Martha?" Yusei asked, following behind as Judai made sure to shut the door once they were all in.

"I'm doing quite well - it's still amazing how much of a difference the holidays make when it comes to the children's moods," Martha replied, moving away from the other two to pat both Yusei and Judai on their backs this time, "And what about you two lovebirds?"

"Oh, they're lovebirds alright," Crow snickered, Jack smirking next to him with a nod while Yusei just rolled his eyes along with Judai, "We've got pictures if you wanna see them."

"Wait, what?" Judai asked, narrowing his eyes at him with a suspicious look, "What pictures? I've made extra sure _not_ to let you guys slip any pictures away."

On the other hand, Yusei knew exactly what pictures Crow was talking about - they were most likely the mistletoe incident and a compilation of a few other times where he hadn't cared enough about having their pictures taken and Judai hadn't noticed them doing so. He'd actually forgotten about that until now, and he made a mental note to remember to ask Crow for digital copies of the files - he definitely would _not_ be going to Jack for them because Crow's teasing was significantly easier to ignore than Jack's, plus he still had that dirt on his brother's love life to hold over him if it got too bad.

"Oh don't worry, I've got ones of Jack and Carly too-"

"You what?!" Jack exclaimed, turning on a dime and giving Crow a betrayed look, "When? How?!"

Crow cackled as he dodged a grab at him and ran inside, yelling, "Kids, Crow the bullet is here! Save him from the big bad wolf Jack!" A litany of happy cries followed the declaration, and soon enough the inside sounded like chaos. The remaining three of them looked on in exasperation, sharing a smile between them.

"So he did get the girl, huh?" Martha mused, a proud look on her face, "Finally starting to put himself together again, it's about time."

"Yeah, you really helped with that. After you came over that one time and lectured him he's just been doing better and better," Judai smiled, "We'll have to get Carly down here one day to meet you, you'll really like her."

"You'll probably also wonder how in the world those two got together, she's far more energetic than him," Yusei joked, knowing fully well that the same could be said about their relationship as well - Judai was far more energetic than he was normally, even if he had his serious moments (which could happen at the drop of a hat, too).

They heard a muffled yell from further down the hallway in the main room that sounded an awful lot like Jack and Crow, who were, if Yusei had to guess, probably in the middle of getting dog-piled by all the kids. It made him half-tempted to summon a couple duel spirits to go add to the chaos, just to see what would happen.

"Well, let's go save those two - I'd like to see all those pictures, after all!" Martha stated, leading the way inside.

Yusei heard Judai let out a sigh from next to him, though it took no longer than a couple seconds for them to be holding hands and making their way down the hallway after her. That was only after a quick kiss, of course, and a knowing look from Judai that told Yusei he'd be hearing about those pictures later and why he never told him about them; he hoped that he'd feel better about it after seeing them and getting over the initial embarrassment, though, because he knew that Judai was a total sap and would absolutely love having pictures of them kissing under mistletoe.


	356. Christmas Plans

_**12/22/19**_

"So what's everyone planning to do for Christmas?" Lua asked later once everyone was all settled down. It'd taken a couple hours, though that was mostly because all the kids were excited to see Jack again after so long - usually whenever he came over it was either to do something for Martha or drop something off, so they never got to see him that often or for more than a couple minutes when they did. Crow visited a lot more since a couple of the kids there were ones he'd spent a long time protecting, and Yusei was more reserved than his two brothers which the kids seemed to subconsciously pick-up on since they didn't attempt to ever dog-pile him.

That wasn't what would spare Judai though - instead, he was spared because he was the one that would materialize their duel monsters to play with them. After all, who had time to dog-pile a guy when they had their duel monsters to play with instead? The more quiet kids seemed to like to talk with him too, listening more than talking in actuality but he was more than happy to do it whenever he and Yusei visited.

They tried to visit once a month for the most part, especially since Yusei didn't want to get called out by Martha for not visiting in five months like the first time they'd gone, which ended up not being too hard; they always had weekends to fill out and it wasn't difficult to just take a day and decide to go visit. Even when Yusei had classes, there were always weeks where he had light work so their weekends were basically free to do whatever they wanted.

"I'm not entirely sure beyond presents and stuff in the morning, but Carly's coming over so I'm sure she and I'll come up with something to pass the time," Judai replied, shrugging with a relaxed grin, "Besides, who knows what's in those presents? There'll probably be plenty to play around with after we open them."

"That's true," Luka smiled, watching the other table where Jack was currently regaling a group of children with a highly exaggerated story of a duel he'd had while he was the champion, "Mom said something about going out somewhere, but when we asked about it neither of our parents would say a word..."

"I wanna know where so badly, but it's a secret!" Lua complained, though he didn't look very upset about it considering it was basically a Christmas gift by nature, "I'm excited for presents though, there's a whole bunch under the tree already and I wanna open them already!"

"I understand that way too well," Crow groaned, laying on the table with a childish pout on his face, "I swear, every time I pass our tree I get more and more curious, _especially_ after we got all those packages in the mail. That was a little ridiculous how much there was, now that I think about it."

"It definitely makes it more interesting... I have to admit even I'm more than a little curious about what's in them," Yusei stated, giving Judai a knowing look afterwards, "Plus I'm pretty sure more keep getting added somehow."

"Well, just more to open then!" Judai grinned, letting it turn into a little bit more of a smirk when he turned towards Yusei; he squeezed his hand under the table teasingly and bit back a laugh at the raised eyebrow he got in return.

"Huh... now that I think about it, do you guys do the whole 'open a present at midnight' thing?" Lua wondered, suddenly looking thoughtful, "Our parents told us it was kind-of a tradition of sorts, and it sounds cool. We can stay up 'til midnight easily!"

"Lua, we've done that tradition for years, but you're the one who always falls asleep before hand!" Luka reminded him, her exasperated sigh making it seem like they'd had this conversation multiple times before, "It's not our fault you don't stay up long enough for it, they used to do it... _beforehand_ as well, it's not a new idea!"

"I used to do that too," Judai mused, thinking back to the few years where either one or both of his parents were there for Christmas - it was something they actually tried to be home for, which he could appreciate a little bit at least, even if they sucked in pretty much all other aspects, "It's pretty fun, though usually my parents would pick out what present I got to open so it wasn't too big, otherwise I'd be up all night wanting to use it."

"Sounds smart - I'd imagine you'd be hard to put to bed on a normal night," Yusei teased, nudging him lightly even as Judai rolled his eyes in return.

"Ha ha, yes, very funny," he drawled, moving on from his point, "Either way, sounds fun to do again if you guys are up for it. We'll pick out one for each person beforehand so it's not too big, we all know what we got each other after all."

"Glad I haven't actually wrapped my gifts yet then, 'cause I gotta split one of them up in that case," Crow blinked, going to say more before he was interrupted by a ball hitting him in the side - it sounded like a fairly light hit, but it was a hit regardless, and he immediately turned to see who'd thrown it with a mischievous grin on his face, stating, "Alright, who threw that?! 'Cause big bro Crow is ready to get his revenge!"

The conversation was effectively derailed thanks to the distraction, but it was a simple shift to discussing all the different ways Crow was getting his ass metaphorically handed to him by a bunch of children. It got especially lively once Martha joined the conversation and everyone gathered around to see the pictures Crow had promised, though a few of them were saved just for Martha's eyes (like the mistletoe one, for instance).

At least Judai and Yusei weren't the only ones getting embarrassed here as Jack was quick to join them in their mock sulking in the corner of the room.


	357. Food Decisions

_**12/23/19**_

 _HERO: hey carly_

 _HERO: anything specific you want for food?_

 _Swirly Glasses: Not really, I'll eat pretty much anything!_

 _HERO: you sure?_

 _Swirly Glasses: Yeah, I'm sure, don't worry about it!_

"Hey Jack!" Judai called, not believing for one second that there wouldn't be something specific that Carly would appreciate having around on Christmas - he was currently trying to put together a list of things to make either tomorrow or on Christmas (as it was in two days), and he wanted to make sure everyone had something specific they liked. For instance, Yusei had specifically been in the mood for more cookies, so that's what he'd be doing tomorrow... though he was pretty sure half the reason Yusei wanted those was because he wanted to goof off with him while making it again. Fair, because Judai liked doing that quite a bit as well, even if they ended up making everything and themselves a mess.

"What's up?" Jack called back, currently in the middle of playing a board game against the other two. Judai had actually been playing with them, but he'd won the last two times and could tell there was a mild level of frustration lingering around after, so he was taking a break to let them vent some steam on each other; Yusei, of course, was the exception and knew what he was doing by taking a break, and he looked pretty entertained the entire time, especially now that _he_ was the one winning.

 _Has he always been this competitive?_ Judai wondered briefly, though he let the thought fade away after thinking through it a little bit. It was probably partly his influence, yeah, but it had to have already been there in the first place - he just brought it out over time.

"Is there anything specific you think Carly would like for food? I tried asking her but got nothing pretty much," Judai asked, tapping his pencil against the table he was using.

Jack paused, contemplating it for a while before replying, "She likes baked goods a lot, so something like that."

"Jack, baked goods is such a huge range of food," Crow stated before Judai could; sure it was more specific than 'any food' right now, but it was still way too vague to do anything with because baked goods ranged anywhere from curry buns to chocolate lava cakes to cookies.

"Shut up, don't you think I know that?" Jack muttered, thinking a little while longer, "Nothing too sweet, she tends to lean towards savory food more than sweets."

Well... it was a little more helpful, at least. Now Judai just had to figure out what to do with that information, though Crow was still fighting on his behalf in the meantime to try and get a more specific answer while Yusei looked to be taking the extra time to study the board and take his turn slowly.

Somewhere amidst the arguing, Jack picked up his cup of coffee to sip at so he didn't have to answer right away, which sparked an idea that Judai was quick to take hold of.

 _Coffee... something based off coffee_ , he mused, trying to think of all the different baked goods out there that utilized coffee in one shape or another, _Coffee cake? Nah, let's not do that... wait._ Suddenly, he remembered one specific food that he hadn't had in a long time but had spent a bit of time learning to make during one of his restaurant stints, and he grinned at how perfect it was.

"I'll make tiramisu then," Judai decided, quickly jotting it down on his list before making several bullet points underneath of all the ingredients he'd need for it, "Everyone here likes coffee and it might as well be a baked good."

"What's that?" Crow asked, and when Judai looked up he had three pairs of curious eyes staring at him - it was like the second they heard coffee they all perked up and to attention, and Judai bit back any laughter he had in favor of committing the sight to memory since it wasn't exactly common for such an image to not just be imaginary.

"It's a coffee-based dessert cake, but it's not exactly _cake_ , per say," Judai explained, trying to think of the best way to put it - tiramisu wasn't exactly the easiest thing to describe to anyone who didn't already know what it was, "It's layers of uh... icing? And uh, sponge cookies. Just trust me, it's really good, you guys'll love it." Honestly, he didn't have a much better way of putting it - he highly doubted any of them new what mascarpone cheese was or ladyfingers. Well, maybe Jack would know, but if even he was asking what tiramisu was then he probably didn't.

"Yeah I'm just gonna trust you on that one," Crow laughed sheepishly, the idea clearly flying over his head. Yusei had already looked back at the board, used to simply taking his food explanations passively since Judai always took the time to show him what he was talking about later when he was actually making it, and seemed to be doing a few things without the other two noticing.

"As long as it's good, I don't care what you make," Jack said, taking another sip of his coffee.

"Both of you owe me half your resources."

There was a pause of dead silence as everyone looked at Yusei, Jack and Crow turning to look at the board in dread right after. A smug little smile formed on Yusei's face when they did so and very nearly threw their cards away in frustration, seeing exactly what he'd done and knowing that he was completely serious.

Judai finally let that laughter from earlier come out, laughing at not just the others' misfortune but the tiny wink Yusei gave him when the others weren't looking, flashing one of the cards in his hand towards him for a split second - the other two were completely screwed the next turn.


	358. Christmas Eve

_**12/24/19**_

"Three more minutes," Judai reminded cheerfully, leaning on Yusei as they sat on the couch waiting for midnight to come. Crow and Jack sat across from them, Crow straddling his chair as usual while Jack had his phone out while he sipped at some tea for once (so he could actually get some sleep once they were done, probably) - he assumed he was texting Carly, judging from how quickly he was tapping at the device.

He and Yusei had some mugs of hot chocolate instead of tea, as Judai wanted to get more in the holiday spirit; he made enough for all four of them just in case, which ended up being a good thing because the second Crow walked in the kitchen and saw that it was being made from scratch instead of from a packet, he looked and sounded two seconds away from begging for some. He made sure it was extra peppermint-y, adding some crushed candy cane on top of a bunch of mini marshmallows once he'd poured out three cups. The extra was stored away in the fridge for whoever wanted it in the morning, which Judai was almost one-hundred percent sure would be Yusei.

"You don't have to remind us every minute," Jack said, giving him a dry look as he glanced up from his phone, "In fact, please don't."

"Aw come on, where's the fun in that? Crow and Yusei will even do it with me, I bet," Judai replied, glancing at both of them with as innocent a smile as he could muster right now whilst half-asleep and comfortable - being on the couch and cuddling Yusei's arm was a double-edged sword in that he was warm and comfy, but in return had to result to doing _something_ to keep him from falling asleep. Thus, he was counting the minutes as they went by, keeping his focus on-point and his eyes open.

"Yeah, I bet they will," Jack muttered, already looking defeated before he turned back to his phone, tapping away once again after taking a longer sip from his tea this time.

Eventually the next minute finished, and all three of them at the same time stated so with a round of 'Two minutes' filling the air. Jack just gave all three of them a half-heart-ed glare, no heat behind it despite the smirk all of them had on their faces at his reaction.

"Alright, we'll spare ya until it finally hits midnight then," Crow snickered, knowing how ridiculous it was since that was literally less than two minutes away.

"Should we pick out what present each person will get in the meantime?" Judai suggested, glancing over all the presents, "One each, and we all know what we got each other so..."

"Nothing too big, right?" Yusei double-checked, pointing at a small box once Judai nodded in confirmation, "Alright, then you open that one."

Judai hummed, grabbing the little box with a smile before pointing at another, "Crow, get that one for Jack."

"Jack, did you have a small one for me or Yusei?" Crow asked, grabbing the present and tossing it lightly to Jack, who caught it easily with a much calmer look now.

"For you, the smallest one to the right... yeah, that one," Jack replied, watching as Crow picked up a package after a few moments.

"Okay, guess I get to give Yusei this one then," Crow grinned, grabbing another one close-by and tossing this one as well to Yusei, "Also, five seconds!"

Jack twitched slightly, stating, "Liar! You didn't wait until-"

" _Merry Christmas!_ " They all cheered, interrupting him as he sighed and accepted his fate, cheering alongside them as well much to their joy - it seemed even Jack wasn't immune to the holiday cheer.

With that they all turned to their presents, curious to see what they'd gotten. The first one to get their present all the way open was Crow, and he laughed happily as he held up a black scarf that had an embroidered picture of Blackwing - Blizzard the Far North on one end and Blackwing - Ghibli the Searing Wind on the other. Jack was next, smiling in satisfaction upon seeing the set of pins Judai had found of his duel spirits, including all of the resonators; Yusei opened his to find some stickers of his duel spirits, along with a larger one of Stardust Dragon - most likely he'd put them on his laptop case or something like that in order to personalize it a bit, since he hadn't done that yet.

Finally, Judai opened his, a bit curious to find out what Yusei'd gotten him - to his utter delight, it turned out to be a new set of hair clips, Christmas themed and with varying designs of snowflakes or poinsettias, though some were plain red and green as well.

He had actually been thinking about getting new ones after November had passed, mainly because it wasn't actually autumn anymore and it was a bit odd to wear those colors with winter outfits (odd for him, at least - he knew it wasn't a big problem, or even really a problem at all, but he liked to _match_ at least if he could), but he hadn't done it; he was very happy to have some that fit now, plus the red ones he wouldn't feel weird about re-using once the holidays were over since it matched his usual outfits anyway.

He put them on to test them, holding up his phone so he could see how it looked, turning to shoot Yusei a smile and blinking when he was met with another phone camera instead - Yusei looked entirely unapologetic, merely laughing and calling him cute whilst holding the phone out of reach when he complained about catching him unaware.


	359. Merry Christmas!

_**12/25/19**_

It was probably the earliest Judai had ever seen Jack get up, but he supposed that was to be expected - he himself had stayed up incredibly late waiting for Yusei to get home from meetings, and he was sure he'd wake up much earlier too if it meant greeting him right when he got back. As it was, Jack had already had his required dose of morning coffee by the time the knock on the door came, Crow yawning and coming downstairs around that time and Yusei currently in the middle of getting his own dose of coffee.

He had to grin at the sight of Jack's features visibly softening upon seeing Carly, though he quickly hid it by smiling more normally and greeting her, "Hey! Merry Christmas, come on in!"

"Merry Christmas!" Carly replied cheerfully, looking a little tired but mostly awake - she ended up having her bag taken and put to the side by Jack before she could make her way over, peeking into the kitchen when Judai moved out of its entry way, "It smells good in here..."

"That would be breakfast," Judai explained, going to pull up a chair at the kitchen table next to Yusei before pausing, turning to ask, "Did you want coffee or anything? We've got tea and a whole bunch of other stuff, too."

"Coffee would be nice... I had some this morning but it'd be nice to have something more sweet than that quick cup I made and downed before I could taste it," she said, nudging Jack who'd come to stand next to her, "I have no idea how _some_ people can drink coffee straight from the coffee maker."

"It tastes perfectly fine, right Yusei?" Jack retorted, eyeing the place where Yusei was currently doing just that - drinking coffee straight black without any add-ins.

He downed the rest before he responded with a very slight smile, stating, "Yeah, but it's better with sweetener."

Jack huffed and gave them all a playful glare as they laughed at his misfortune, opting to simply stay quiet and rest his weight on Carly's shoulder. In the meantime, Crow finally made it to the kitchen, waving at the newcomer with a tired smile before yawning again and heading straight for the coffee machine as well.

"At least I know Crow agrees with me," Jack concluded, staring intently at Crow as the other turned to him at first with a confused look before realizing what he was referring to, letting out a little laugh.

"True enough - I don't care much if it's sweet or not, I just want the caffeine," Crow said, pouring out just the right amount while he did so and pulling more laughs out of them, "Merry Christmas, good morning, all of that."

"Shall we open presents now? Or after breakfast?" Judai asked, wanting to double-check with them now that Carly was here - luckily there hadn't been much time in between her getting there and all of them waking up, plus breakfast was only a few minutes away from being ready to be pulled out of the oven. He passed the drink he'd finished making to Carly, who grinned at the sight of his little creamer coffee latte art on top of the cup before sipping at it.

"Delicious, I really wanted this, thanks," Carly sighed happily, pausing to take another sip before answering, "And I say after breakfast, then we don't have to worry about food while doing stuff. Plus, I need Jack to help me go get some presents from the car."

"Need an extra hand? I'll go too," Crow volunteered, going with them out the door a minute or so later once Carly'd been able to put her drink safely away on the table and leaving Judai and Yusei in the kitchen together.

"I know I said it already this morning, but... Merry Christmas, love," Judai smiled, hugging Yusei from behind where he was sitting. At this point Yusei looked a lot more awake, the caffeine from the coffee finally kicking in, and he found himself quickly pulled in front of him and facing a happy grin.

"Merry Christmas to you too, Judai," Yusei said, kissing him lightly knowing that there wasn't much time until the others got back. They both savored the longer kiss as long as they dared before pulling apart, pecking each other on the lips immediately afterwards with grins that simply couldn't be torn off their faces.

"...You gonna tell 'im you were drinking a latte too?" Judai snickered, licking his lips a little as he pulled back.

"No, let him think I wasn't. It's more fun this way," Yusei replied, sharing matching smiles with him before noticing a certain feline slink into the kitchen with a long stretch, "Ah... looks like someone's finally awake."

"Hm? Oh, mornin' Pharaoh!" Judai greeted, noticing the cat out of the corner of his eye as well before patting imaginary dust off his legs as he straightened up and fully away from Yusei for now, "Got a special Christmas breakfast for you, you spoiled cat, c'mere."

That was the last slow moment Judai would get for the next couple hours as everything seemed to start happening at once, with the oven dinging to signal it was ready, Pharaoh getting his food and purring quite happily upon seeing some extra treats put in with his breakfast, and the three who'd went out coming back in with a bunch of packages; he wouldn't have it any other way, though. Christmas was meant to be spent with family and those you love and he was doing exactly that - he really couldn't be happier.


	360. Opening Presents

_**12/26/19**_

As it was, there were... a _lot_ of presents to get through, and everyone was just a bit too eager to get started that they decided to just open whatever present whoever was closest to the tree happened to grab without any sort of order. Whenever they got to certain people's, Carly would ask who they were, and they'd give a short run-down on what they were like; for the most part she seemed to get that they were all equally as eccentric as Phoenix is, at least, except for maybe Asuka... though Judai knew she could get to that point if all the right buttons got pushed.

She didn't have nearly as many presents, obviously, but she'd actually gotten one from Phoenix - it was a little bit of a surprise when they found it mixed in with all the boxes, but a pleasant one at least. He'd ended up getting her a little light-up tree key-chain, the card explaining that it was so they'd never forget Judai's clumsiness.

Like he thought, he was _never_ going to live down that moment... at least not for a long time. Then they'd probably forget before suddenly someone brought it up again thanks to being reminded about it, and the whole process would start all over again.

They paused about a quarter of the way through, though, to pull out a certain few boxes that they'd all gotten for a certain feline, who'd been watching everyone curiously and actually not being lazy for once as he trotted around the room sniffing at the presents being opened.

"Alright, is that all of them?" Judai double-checked, adjusting one of his hair clips that he'd gotten just to make sure it was still firmly latched on - he'd knocked them out of place a little on accident earlier that morning while he was cooking, so now he was just playing it safe. After he got nods of confirmation from the rest of them, he waved towards Pharaoh, who went towards the center of the room where he threw the first package towards (carefully, of course, since he didn't want to hit the cat).

"Go ahead, rip the box up as much as you want," he grinned, gesturing at the box again when Pharaoh gave him an incredulous look, "Yes, really! Merry Christmas, you spoiled cat. We all love ya."

It'd been a while since he'd seen Pharaoh in action, claws out and shredding at something - he was just so big that it looked cuter than it did menacing like Pharaoh probably wanted to look. The wrapping paper was made short work of, and he'd made sure to use one of those thin gift boxes you'd usually find something like clothes in so that it was easy to tear apart; it's not like the cat _couldn't_ tear through a regular cardboard box with ease, though.

Everyone grinned when the first mess of shredded paper and cardboard revealed a new fuzzy blanket, Pharaoh immediately sitting down and pawing at the plastic around it so that they got the hint and opened it for him - he was smart enough not to try in case he accidentally clawed through the blanket in the process of trying to open it up. Soon enough, he was back in his corner and rolling around his new blanket along with a couple new fluffy stuffed animals to use as pillows and a couple boxes of premium treats that Judai stored away in the kitchen after giving him a few.

There was one particular present he was waiting for Yusei to open as they went on, though, and Judai couldn't help but feel more excitement bubble up in him when Yusei finally reached for the package. Part of it was because, well, he wanted to see his reaction, but it was also mostly because he _himself_ couldn't wait to use it.

Getting presents for the both of them had been such a good idea, he wanted to do it every Christmas, even if they still got each other little things like the hair clips in his hair, for instance.

" _Stars_ , Judai, why is this thing so heavy?" Yusei laughed, letting out a little huff as he just dragged the box in front of him instead of picking it all the way up.

"It doesn't look that heavy," Crow commented, standing up and walking over to try and pick it up himself - obviously he could, all of them there could, but he clearly wasn't expecting that much weight in a medium-sized box so he ended up letting out a huff in surprise just like Yusei, "Holy crap! Okay, that _is_ heavy!"

"...You almost dropped it on my foot," Yusei stated, giving Crow an exasperated look before getting a quick apology and turning back to the present, "Well, guess there's only one way to find out why this thing is so heavy..."

With that he started tearing open the paper, Judai already having the scissors in hand to pass off to him when he'd need to cut open all the tape on the box inside. He did so, and grinned when he finally got to the air-sealed gift inside and a little piece of paper on the top in lieu of an actual card in order to actually explain what it was. There was a cute little drawing of Junk Synchron and Winged Kuriboh wearing santa hats in the corner of it, which Judai thought he did a pretty good job with.

"A weighted blanket?" Yusei wondered, a small smile on his face as he carefully tore open the plastic and got a feel of the soft blanket inside - it was incredibly soft and fluffy, seeing as he'd made sure to buy a high quality one. They were expensive as hell, yes, but _incredibly_ worth it in his opinion.

They all laughed when he struggled a little bit to get used to the weight before flinging it over himself quickly, Judai getting partially covered as well next to him. When he glanced over, Yusei was giving him a wide, happy smile, rubbing his face against the fabric almost subconsciously before leaning over and giving him a peck on the cheek.

"I love it," he breathed, letting the blanket finally fall off the top of them before re-situating it to spread over the top of both of them - it was a very big blanket, Judai had made sure of it when he bought it, knowing that it was going to be shared by both of them all the time.

"I'm glad... Merry Christmas, Yusei," Judai smiled back, holding his hand under the blanket as they took a little break to watch the others open some more of their presents. It was nice to sit there and cuddle under the blanket, the extra weight of it making it feel like they were wrapped in a big hug together - it helped that it was quick to warm up because of the fabric, too, which added to how nice it was.

"Merry Christmas," Yusei replied, leaning against him quietly with a smile stuck on his face; his eyes felt like they were sparkling with happiness, which made Judai feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside as well.

His first Christmas in his newfound home was everything he'd hoped for, and Judai leaned back into the other as well with his own content smile as well - Christmas really was his favorite holiday, and now he had even more reasons why.


	361. Holiday Recovery

_**12/27/19**_

As it turned out, that blanket he'd gotten the two of them was positively evil because the next morning, neither of them felt any inclination to even attempt getting out of bed. It was nice and warm, and the weight pressing down on them just made it feel impossible to even think about trying to move and get rid of it, especially knowing that they'd just get blasted with cold air the second they did so.

"What were we even planning on doing today?" Judai mumbled, yawning slightly as he tiredly blinked up at Yusei - the other was wrapped around him and holding him close like a teddy bear, as usual, and it was a deadly combo when paired with the blanket. He didn't think he'd be getting up at all unless someone forced him too.

The pause of silence before Yusei answered was all Judai needed to know that the other's brain was functioning just about as well as his own, which was currently 'slow as molasses', "Weren't we going to visit someone?"

Another pause of silence ensued, both of them struggling to figure out who exactly that someone was, until Judai suddenly remembered first, "No, we weren't going to visit, _Aki_ was going to visit _us_ at Starlight Junktion."

"Don't we have to technically visit the place too?" Yusei sighed, arms tightening around him slightly as he adjusted himself just a little.

"Touche," Judai huffed, groping blindly behind him for his phone on the bedside table, "What time is it even...? I don't know about you, but I don't plan on getting up until we either absolutely have to get ready or one of us is starving."

"Oh good, we have the same plan then," Yusei laughed quietly, leaning a bit closer down to his ear before saying, "A little more to your left."

"Are you sure it's _my_ left and not _your_ left?" Judai teased, finally finding the phone after moving his hand to his own left, just like Yusei'd said, "Anyway... it's like, ten in the morning."

"I'm amazed the other two didn't wake us up with anything," Yusei agreed, feeling just as incredulous as him about the time considering they were normally up around eight, maybe nine if one of them is particularly tired or the other purposefully left them to get more sleep. If they weren't, they usually would hear a sharp sound or yell that had them up at those times anyways, so it was a weird realization to have that they'd either blocked out the calls or they'd never happened at all.

Then again, they themselves might still be asleep. Carly'd ended up staying over the night, not that any of them particularly minded of course seeing as it was Christmas, everyone was a bit tipsy from bringing out some... stronger drinks to celebrate after dinner, and Jack ended up staying at her place a couple days a week anyway.

"I'm not gonna complain about it, at least. We've got plenty of time to just sleep," Judai shrugged, putting his phone back in roughly the same spot before going back to reveling in the warmth and comfort surrounding him. It felt heavenly to just lay there and relax without having to worry about doing anything urgent, which he hadn't actually been able to do for a while due to the stress from the holidays.

Christmas may be his favorite time and holiday of the year, yes, and the stress from finding all the right presents and getting everything all decorated would always be there behind every action during it, but the fun from it all tended to outweigh it significantly and make the whole time enjoyable. Then, when it was all said and done, it was almost like he was decompressing and pushing all the stress right out of him by letting his mind blank out for a couple hours in blissful laziness in bed; this year was simply a million times better, however, because he had Yusei to share the entire process with, _including_ the hours of laziness at the end.

He was so comfortable that he wasn't going to move anymore, even to just to lift his head up and pull himself up just a little bit so he could kiss the other like he wanted to in his head. Lucky for him, though, it seemed Yusei had a similar thought, but had just the right amount of energy left in him to actually pull him up in his arms so their heads were at the same level, and they had what was probably the most tired, lazy morning kiss they'd ever had in their life.

They both ended up chuckling afterwards before kissing again, lips more so just brushing rather than pressing together, almost like they were teasing each other. Judai could feel the tingle on his lips and couldn't resist pressing just a little harder, tongue darting out for just a moment to swipe against the other's bottom lip, pulling a tiny little noise out of Yusei that left him grinning and laughing quietly in satisfaction.

"I love you," Judai breathed, burying his face partially into his neck and shoulder and adjusting himself so he had a grip on the front of Yusei's shirt and an arm on top of him.

"I love you too," Yusei replied, doing the same for him before adjusting himself to hug him better once more.

Their plan was a success, at least - they didn't get out of bed until Judai's stomach rang out loud and clear throughout the otherwise peacefully quiet room, and they both burst out into laughter when it happened.


	362. Beginning Reflection

_**12/28/19**_

"Only a few days left until New Year's," Judai remarked, blinking down at his phone and all the emails on it - there were plenty of game notifications that he quickly glanced over, having already played DDO with Yusei and getting the items they'd wanted from the holiday event. Carly had come through again, easily finding what quest lines they had to complete to get the next effect ring they wanted, which caused little snowflakes to sparkle and fall around them. It was unfortunate that they'd have to start focusing on getting some other items soon, though, because there were only four effect ring slots and they were already taking up three of them... it would be four, but the hearts effect was from the Valentine's event item, which wasn't a ring.

 _Had it already been that long?_ Judai wondered, remembering that time around Valentine's day very easily - it felt like it was just yesterday that they'd dueled in the online tournament, then the next day started a long series of chocolate-centered fun. He hadn't known at the time that it would become such an important aspect to them that they wouldn't be able to think of chocolate the same way without thinking of each other, but that's what it turned out to be, no matter how ridiculous it seemed to be in retrospect.

They had a lot of little things that seemed ridiculous in retrospect, actually, but he wouldn't have it any other way. It was stuff that was unique to them and their relationship, and he loved thinking back to all those little things and remembering just how... _happy_ they were; that's all that mattered, really. That they were _happy_ during those moments, ridiculous nature or not, because that's what made all of this worth it.

He couldn't help but lean further into Yusei, leaning his head back to look up at him from where he was on the couch and sharing a smile with him. Yusei shuffled a little before moving him off his shoulder to rest his head on his lap, re-situating himself to put his arms around him and keep using his tablet.

"Already, huh?" Yusei mused, pausing to look down at him before tilting his head slightly with a teasing grin on his face, "Hard to believe it's been almost exactly a year since you sprained my wrist."

"Hey!" Judai complained, lightly smacking his chest with a pout and a laugh, "You say that like that like it was my intention, which it was _not_!"

Yusei merely hummed in response, making him pout a little more and hide behind his phone a little. He didn't let that happen for long, though, with Yusei moving the phone gently away as he looked down at him with a far softer smile.

"I know. You came stumbling in like a wildfire," Yusei said, and though the words sounded like they'd be teasing in nature they weren't when he said them with his smile being so fond like that. Still, he paused like he'd realized what they _could_ sound like, before explaining just to make sure, "I don't mean that in a bad way, obviously."

"Yeah, I got that," Judai replied quietly, his own smile growing soft as he felt the warmth in his chest settle in to stay, "Though I'd definitely say it was more like crashing in - they didn't exactly explain what would happen when I came out of the jump, otherwise I'd probably have been more prepared."

"I don't think you ever actually explained to me how you managed the jump," Yusei realized, curiosity spreading on his face, "If you don't want to, though, it's fine."

"Nah, it's fine. It's not like they said I had to keep it a secret, especially since they're so hard to find for even someone like me," Judai shrugged, letting his phone finally fall from his hands onto the couch since he clearly wasn't going to be using it for a while, "There's an archetype out there called the Time Thieves, and all those duel spirits live in this sectioned off, super hard to discover let alone learn about place in one of the newer spirit dimensions. It took a while but I basically just found them and they let me jump after determining my intentions."

"Just like that?"

"Pretty much-"

" _He got knocked out and had his mind walked through while he was unconscious,_ " Yubel stated, appearing next to them with a slight smirk on her face that looked torn between reprimanding and amused. Judai sighed, though it ended up more like an annoyed huff as he knew she was just trying to make sure he got properly reprimanded in a way that would actually get through to him - he'd always deflected a little when it came to this topic, passively accepting that they were right without really trying to think about it; if there was one thing Yubel and Haou had learned, though, it was that tattling on him to Yusei was _highly_ effective.

"...Was it painful?"

"No-"

" _ **Yes**_ _, they accidentally gave him a concussion._ "

Judai threw his hands up in exasperation, being careful not to hit Yusei in the face as he did so, "The dude apologized for that! He didn't mean to hit so hard, he'd just panicked from suddenly having a trespasser in their _very hidden home_. It's understandable, really."

He groaned as he saw the dry look on Yusei's face that matched with Yubel's, felt Haou's amusement as he listened in, and buckled in to get through the next ten minutes of Yusei being a total worrywart whilst somehow keeping up the most calm, deadpan voice and logic that he always had with this sort of stuff.

It was endearing as all hell, though, and Judai could never be truly upset about it, since them being able to do this and have a nice, long hug after was exactly why he did what he did in the first place.


	363. New Year's Plans

_**12/29/19**_

With only a few days left until the end of the year, they really needed to figure out what their plans were. Judai remembered that Jack and Crow had gone to a tournament last time, hence why he was able to get about a week alone with Yusei when he initially arrived, but he wasn't entirely sure if that was their plan again this year. Plus, he was pretty sure he needed to start looking at tournaments again as well just to keep his rank up in the pro leagues, and he wouldn't be able to duel in that first tournament he'd participated in this year because he was too high of a rank now.

It was easiest just to ask, though, so Judai simply asked them the next time all four of them were together. He talked with Yusei about it beforehand, but... well, considering what Yusei was doing when he arrived on New Year's this year, he really didn't do much to celebrate it. Judai just needed to know how many people were going to be around before he made any plans for the night so he make the right amount of food and drinks.

"What're we all doing on New Year's? Are you guys doing that tournament again?" Judai asked, sipping at a hot cup of coffee that Yusei had made for him - he was tired since he'd woken up a bit too early, and it was currently far too early in the afternoon for him to fall asleep without ruining his sleep schedule. He wasn't entirely sure if he added some extra caffeine or something though since he was wide awake soon after his first few sips, and we was pretty sure that if this kept up he'd be shaky from a caffeine rush when he finished drinking it all.

"I'm not," Jack replied, his own laptop out in front of him for once as he tapped away sending out emails - it wasn't often that Jack did stuff in the living room, but Judai figured it had something to do with the holiday atmosphere and spirit right now, "What about you, Crow?"

"I'm not doing it either this year," Crow shrugged, currently utilizing the tablet holder that they'd made for the movie night during the summer and watching a show. That little holder had turned out to be one of the best spur of the moment ideas they'd had yet, and it'd gotten tons of use by all of them since then, even leading to a couple more movie nights... including one in particular where Crow'd had the great idea to watch a horror movie, with Judai hopping on board enthusiastically, only for both of them to be the most terrified in the end.

Something about well-done horror movies was just extremely unsettling, no matter how many real-life shit shows he'd witnessed that would be considered much, much worse to have happen.

"So we're all going to be here on New Year's Eve and New Year's?" Judai double-checked, getting nods from everyone in response, "Cool, I'm gonna cook somethin' good and I needed to know how much to make."

"I'm inviting Carly over again, then," Jack stated, clearly knowing that none of them had a problem with that. If anything, they really wanted her to come in case they accidentally annoyed him too much - with her around, they could tease him a _lot_ more without him getting too upset. Of course, they would never abuse this fact, but it was still an important one to make note of.

"We can finally play that board game we got from the twins with her," Yusei smiled, looking up from his tablet to glance towards the closet where said board game was currently being stored, "We never got around to it on Christmas."

"Oh yeah, we didn't do that, huh?" Crow realized, pausing his show once it was clear they'd be talking for a bit, "And didn't we get a card game from one of Judai's friends?"

"Yeah, that was Asuka and Thunder," Judai said, sipping at his coffee again and feeling that caffeine rush slowly start to kick in. Daichi and Rei had also given them all little painted, printed pieces of their monsters to use as custom game pieces, which he'd actually known about since they came to him to ask who everyone's spirit partners were. It was probably the only present he'd known about beforehand, purely because of the nature of it, but it was definitely worth the looks of pleasant surprise on the others' faces when they opened them.

"We should bet again based on who wins and who loses," Crow suggested with a grin, getting all three of them to look at him with varying looks of confusion.

"Wow, I thought you would've _not_ wanted to do that after losing so hard in the snowball war," Judai pointed out, the other two unable to stop their snorts of amusement at the reminder of a soaked-to-the-bone Crow.

"Yeah, well, this isn't a snowball war, plus Jack's the one with the highest board game loss rate here-"

"I _do not_ have the highest loss rate," Jack interrupted, a twitch forming in one of his eyebrows as he leaned back in his seat with his arms crossed and glared at him, "I'm pretty sure that's _you_."

"Actually... that would be you, Jack," Yusei stated factually, having Jack's stare of death turn to him instead. He seemed completely unaffected though, merely blinking and raising an amused eyebrow in response, continuing, "What? It's true, the last six games of board games we've played with you, you've been the first one out in four of them. You _are_ getting better at them, though."

What went unspoken was that these were strategy board games with resource management as a main component of the game, something that Jack wasn't the best at. However, he was definitely improving the more they played it, so that was a good thing - it was clear that strategy didn't come easy to him, so the fact that he hadn't been the first one out the last two times they'd played was a good indicator of his improvement.

"Alright, y'know what? Bet. I won't be the loser of it," Jack huffed, challenging all of them at the same time.

"How do we factor Carly into this?" Judai wondered, frowning at the realization that it wasn't just the four of them that would be playing, "We can't exactly include her in the bet unless we significantly limit the options..."

"We'll just say that the placement is purely based on us four, no matter where she ends up placing," Yusei decided, pausing for a moment before adding, "Though if she wins, I say we all are the losers and she gets to decide what we have to do."

"Ooh, raising the stakes, I like that," Crow said, all of them grinning in agreement with the proposal, "I say we play right now, no bets and just for extra practice then. I'm in the mood now."

"Same," Jack replied, shutting his laptop firmly and standing up to put it back safely in his room, "Do any of them, I don't care which."

At the same time, Judai kicked back the last bit of his coffee, feeling the full, shaky caffeine rush by now and grinning in excitement - he couldn't wait to beat them all again (hopefully, considering he was actually practically even in wins with Yusei). He did ask for another coffee, though, but this time without the extra caffeine in it; turns out Yusei had indeed added an extra shot of espresso to it just to make sure he crashed when the time finally came to sleep, something he sheepishly admitted before getting pounced and tickled for punishment while Crow watched and cackled before helping Judai out by holding down his arms. Jack just gave a short snicker when he finally returned, ignoring his brother's dying laughter in favor of going and choosing the game himself seeing as they were all clearly busy.

Yusei ended up destroying all of them in every round of the game they played, though, so he got his revenge in the end.


	364. Quiet Reprieve

_**12/30/19**_

Judai needed to go get the ingredients for what he wanted to make, so Yusei was more than happy to spend the day before New Year's Eve driving him around on his bike. It was one of their more favorite ways of getting out and about, as they usually saved whatever shopping they had to do for last and spent the time before it goofing off or going to their favorite spot at the bridge. In this case, they'd gone to the bridge first, making sure their usual towels and such were stored in the the motorcycle seeing as it was slightly snowy outside and there was bound to be ice and snow built up from the last few days; even if it was compact snow, it could be deadly if not taken care of using the proper precautions.

Plus, who wants to have to walk around with wet clothes when they don't have to in weather like that?

They were all set-up soon enough at their favorite bench, though, hoods down since the snow had stopped falling for a little bit. Judai'd made a quick thermos of tea to steep while they were getting there, and quickly microwaved some leftovers to hell and back so they'd still be warm by the time they could actually stop to eat it. Luckily it wasn't windy outside either, which made it really the perfect weather to go out and enjoy the the sights since it was only slightly foggy that morning, the sun breaking through on the horizon without much blockage as it did so.

As they ate, they did so in peaceful silence, simply listening to the sounds of the city and nature around them - it'd been a hectic month so far, and Yusei was more than happy to take a super slow day right before throwing themselves into _another_ hectic day. He could tell that Judai was pretty grateful for it too, no matter how early they'd ended up waking up, since he was the most relaxed he'd seen him be in days as well; something about their quiet little hiding spot overlooking the bridge was just... _relaxing_ in the best way. It reminded him of a few of the times they'd holed up in their room in the castle in Judai's dimension and had little tea parties in the castle's garden, and how they momentarily could simply forget everything else existed except them.

Suddenly though, he heard Judai let out a little hiss from next to him, face scrunched up and a hand over his mouth as he almost dropped his cup - it wasn't too hard to figure out that the tea must've still been too hot to safely drink.

"Burned your tongue?" Yusei asked, nudging him lightly as he leaned a little more into his space, glancing at his own thermos for a moment before taking both of them and putting them to the side, "Here, let me take it."

"Thanks," Judai mumbled, talking quietly so that his tongue didn't hurt as he did so, "Didn't think it'd be _that_ hot still... guess not."

"Maybe if you eat some snow it'll feel better," he joked, getting a snort out of him before leaning in even closer, wrapping his arm around him slowly and tilting his head towards him before letting their noses brush each other, "Or... maybe this'll help."

He waited for just a moment, watching for the little widening of the eyes that Judai would do that had practically the same effect as him blushing, before pressing their lips together gently, hand on the back of the other's head very slowly moving up with his fingers threading through his hair and pulling just ever-so-slightly. He ran a tongue along the other's bottom lip, getting a little noise out of Judai as he easily was let in, being careful not to brush the other's tongue too hard just in case it hurt him - however, this also had the effect of basically teasing him, and he grinned internally at the suddenly tight grip Judai had on his jacket.

They hadn't had the time for a slow kiss like this in what felt like _weeks_ , mainly because of all the chaos of the holidays, so they were going to milk the moment for all it was worth. Sure, they had some quick times in-between where they had some fun with each other, but they were usually too tired by the end of the day to do anything slow like what they were doing now, so it was nice to finally be relaxed enough and feel like they have the time for it.

Soon enough Judai was the one in control, though, shifting his weight a little and pulling back for a split second to readjust his grip so he had his arms around his neck instead of gripping his front before going back in for more. This time Yusei got to be the one feeling teased as a warm tongue brushed along his lips and explored his mouth, shivering a little when Judai lightly danced his fingers across the back of his neck and pulled gently on the strands of hair there. Suddenly he felt Judai pull back a little once again only to feel his bottom lip get gently bitten, the feeling pulling a startled moan out of him that was quickly muffled as he was smothered again, the other smirking against his lips.

He didn't know how long they spent kissing in their own little world, but when they finally pulled apart with half-lidded eyes they were both out of breath and satisfied for now. They laughed quietly about nothing for a bit, sharing another few quick kisses before sighing happily and looking back out at the sun on the horizon, lighting up the bridge as morning traffic slowly began to pick up and be more visible along the roads.

"...Let's stay until we manage to finish the whole thing of tea," Yusei said quietly after a moment, feeling around next to him for the two thermoses and bringing them back to them to hold in their laps.

"I like that idea," Judai replied just as quietly, turning to smile up at him with a soft smile that Yusei was quick to return. He curled further under Yusei's arm that was still around him, and Yusei couldn't help but press a kiss into the top of his head and ruffle the other's hair lightly before he finally rested his head on his.

It fell silent again, but they didn't need to talk to be perfectly happy and enjoy the moment to its fullest - it was just the break they'd been wanting and needing for a while now, after all, and they wouldn't have it any other way.


	365. New Year's Kiss

_**12/31/19**_

They'd told Carly about the bet almost immediately after her arrival, and after her agreement it didn't take long for them all to start up the first game. It went back and forth for a while, Judai and Yusei mostly staying in the lead and Crow being the first one out instead of Jack for once, but it ended with Carly nearly coming back from behind, taking second place behind Judai.

"Aw, I was so close!" Carly grinned, showing her hand off - if Judai hadn't won the game when he did, she would've on her turn, "Nice game, though."

"You too!" Judai chirped, noting the way Yusei was staring in confusion at the board still and wondering how he'd gotten third. He'd gotten supremely unlucky thanks to an event Jack had triggered on one of his turns and gotten dragged down to the point where he wouldn't be able to catch-up in time, though it didn't help that Carly had, on the other hand, gotten a very lucky card pull later on that put the final nail in his coffin so to speak.

"Again," Jack stated, gesturing for Judai to pass him the stack of cards he'd regathered so he could shuffle them. They all agreed to it though, starting up another round after a quick reset of the playing field and getting passed fresh hands to play with.

The rounds passed quickly, a lot more events happening this game than the last one, but Judai was quickly noticing a pattern in that Carly was really lucky with her pulls... almost to the point that it was _unnatural_. By all means, she shouldn't have this kind of consistent luck that was generally a trait reserved for kings like him and Yusei, and it wasn't surprising when she ended up _winning_ the second game.

"Those were... the most _lucky_ pulls ever," Crow complained, sending her a playful pout, "Are we sure she ain't cheating?"

"You wish, I'm just lucky!" She replied, smiling with a bit of a sharp edge of glee to it, "Guess my Fortune Fairies are coming through for me today. I did pull Hikari this morning!"

"Fortune Fairies? Are those your duel monsters?" Judai asked, blinking at the name and the thoughts he'd been having about her weird luck. It'd make a _lot_ more sense if she had an archetype that dealt with luck that was helping her out, and would actually explain a lot of other little things about the things she did as well. He imagined her duel spirits must play some part in her day-to-day life, even if it was just a little bit every day.

"Yeah, that's right. Did I never tell you about them?" Carly answered, pulling out her deck to let him look through them, "They're effect monsters, but they have versions where they're normal monsters with a flavor text description instead. Those descriptions are all fortunes though, so I like to shuffle my deck and pull until I get one every morning just to see what my fortune is, more for fun than anything else. I pull them out for duels, though, it's just easier to keep them with my other cards."

Judai read over the descriptions once he discovered the said normal monster variants were all sorted out already and put on top of the deck, quickly finding the Fortune Fairy Hikari that Carly had mentioned and discovering it meant she'd be super lucky today. He had to wince when he read the other ones afterwards, knowing that if her duel spirits were actually managing to affect her luck then all the bad luck ones had to have an effect too, and that the warnings on them were probably to be heeded.

At least now it made sense why she was winning though, she was quite literally out-magicking him and Yusei. He found it more hilarious than anything else though, and passed her cards back with a smile.

"Interesting deck. We should duel sometime," Judai said, pausing for a moment before adding, "On a day where you pull one of luckier fortunes, though."

Yusei seemed to be the only one to really get what he was saying (which made sense, as the others didn't know about the whole 'King of Games' title and its implications), raising an eyebrow slightly at him and glancing at the deck in Carly's hands before looking back at him. Judai nodded to the silent question, holding back a laugh at the exasperated glint that sparked in the other's eyes for a moment before quiet acceptance replaced it.

"Alright, this time for real! This one's for the bet," Crow declared, everyone resetting one more time even faster than the last in an excited hurry to see who would win and who would lose. They'd actually laid out a couple things the losers would have to do, though the person in second would pick from the list, then third, and then finally fourth... unless Carly won, of course, then it'd go onto fifth place as well.

It was the most hectic game yet, and Judai found it more fun now that he knew that someone else was able to compete fairly with him and Yusei for once. Everyone put in their best effort, but well... it was hard to beat someone with such insane luck granted to them, and Carly won again. For a moment, though, Judai could've _sworn_ he saw one of the Fortune Fairies hovering around Carly with a happy smile, but they were gone too soon for him to really register it and have the time to mention something. He ended up in third while Yusei got second, and Crow came in last instead of Jack this time as well.

"We'll go over the list later, for now though I'm gonna go start on the food," Judai stated, standing up and stretching for a bit before gathering up the empty drink cups that were scattered about at the moment, "Anyone want a refill or somethin'?"

"I'll take another water," Carly replied, Crow chiming in in agreement. Jack still hadn't finished his current cup of coffee so he was good, and from the looks of it Yusei was getting ready to go with him to the kitchen to help out, so he'd just take what he wanted then if he did want anything. He had half the cups taken from him by Yusei, who set Crow's and Carly's down on the counter near the refrigerator while he started to brew himself another coffee.

"Ooh, could you make me one too please? Coffee sounds good right now," Judai asked, smiling up at him and giving him a quick peck on the lips in thanks for the help. He was caught in a hug before he could fully pull away, Yusei kissing his forehead with a grin and a quiet chuckle.

"One coffee coming right up, though I'm not sure if a Kuriboh drinking caffeine is really a good idea," Yusei teased, dodging the light swat Judai made at his arm just in time, "Cute."

"Who's the one who put extra espresso in my coffee just the other day though, huh?" Judai retorted, finishing filling up the first cup with water and starting on the next one, "Obviously it's not that bad an idea."

"Only if they're already tired, which you were."

"Yeah yeah... you make a good point though, an actual Kuriboh wired on caffeine is a nightmare. You should feel lucky that most of your duel spirits are machines and can't drink coffee, 'cause one time Winged Kuriboh got a hold of some espresso somehow and it did _not_ end well," Judai explained, picking up both of the now-full cups and walking out to give them to the two who wanted them.

When he came back in, the kitchen was slowly starting to fill with the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, and he couldn't help but smile at the sight of Yusei staring intensely at the coffee machine as he focused on making sure he put the correct proportion of creamer and syrup into what he could only assume would be Judai's drink. It was cute how focused he was, but he also took the time to appreciate just how handsome he was as well - it was no different than every other time he'd stopped to do so, but he'd never get tired of doing it.

Before he could get caught, though, he started pulling out all the ingredients he'd need, turning on the oven to the right temperature so he could bake the bread dough he'd pre-made last night so he wouldn't have to worry about it today. Everything else would be relatively easy and quick to prepare, considering he was making soba and a couple other things to accompany it, so he hadn't had to worry about those. Soba was a traditional New Year's Eve food and luckily one of the fastest and easiest traditional foods to make.

"Here you go," Yusei eventually said, placing his coffee down in front of him once he'd finished putting a bunch of dry ingredients into a bowl, "One coffee without any extra caffeine, as promised." He felt arms wrap around him from behind and smiled, laughing a bit when he felt Yusei press a kiss to his cheek.

"Thanks, dear," Judai grinned, turning his head so he could return the favor with a kiss of his own before taking a sip of the coffee and letting out a satisfied hum, "Perfect, as usual."

"Did you need any help?" Yusei asked, still not letting go of the hug - not that Judai wanted him to, of course. Hell, he'd probably be perfectly happy if he had to walk around the kitchen the whole time with Yusei wrapped around him, even if it'd be difficult to do everything he needed to.

"No, I'm good - this stuff is simple, don't worry," Judai replied, sighing a little when the other did let go at this point but knowing that there'd be time for that later, "If you want to, though, you could go get everyone and play that new card game in here at the kitchen table?"

"Was already planning on it," Yusei chuckled, going to drag everyone into the kitchen after leaving him with another quick peck on the lips.

Fully satisfied now and armed with coffee, Judai went about making everything with ease, adding in quips here and there once the others started their game in the kitchen and got very competitive about it (as usual, he'd be more worried if there wasn't a ton of competitive banter being tossed around). At some point he got a couple messages in the group chat he was in of all his friends wishing everyone a happy New Year, and he replied back with a picture of the five of them, messy kitchen, disorganized card game and all.

Dinner was served after a while, clearing the table of cards and replacing it with all the food he'd made in a sort of family-style set-up. It was just as good as he hoped it would be, and he got a round of compliments from everyone about how delicious it was.

"I think this the best soba I've ever had," Carly stated, having perked up even more now thanks to the food, "Honestly, not even kidding. Did you make that one pasta dish at that party we were both at too?"

"I can't guarantee I _made_ it, but I did put together the recipe, so I guess that's close enough," Judai answered, taking another bite of the soba and humming happily at the texture of it - not too soft, but not too hard either. Just right.

"Didn't you make the whole menu for that one?" Yusei pointed out, clearly remembering that day easily. Judai wouldn't be surprised if it was due to the sheer amount of stress he'd given off that day - it'd been worth it in the end, and he'd gotten a huge bonus for doing it so fast and well, but it was still annoying to have to rush it like that.

"Yeah... so technically I guess I made all of it if we're going by that logic."

"This is still the best food ever, thanks for the meal," Crow stated in between bites, quickly taking another right after. Jack merely nodded along next to him, though Judai had to hold back a snicker when he saw him steal some of Carly's food off her plate when she wasn't looking. It was even more amusing when Yusei seemed to copy his example and stole a piece of bread when he wasn't looking as well.

Afterwards they passed the time with a few more games and filling the gaps in-between with happy conversation, talking about anything that seemed interesting. Carly shared a few new embarrassing stories about Jack that ended with them laughing while Jack did his best to get her to stop talking by wrapping her in a hug and lifting her up only to start spinning her around lightly; it worked, but only for so long before she was telling another, and soon enough all of them were trying to one-up each other with stories about each other and even themselves.

About thirty minutes before midnight, though, they pulled out chairs and made their way to the roof of the apartment buildings - they'd already gotten permission by the apartment owner to go up to watch the various fireworks displays that would be happening around the city, so they set-up with blankets and warm mugs of whatever hot drink they wanted before settling in to look out over the city. There were colorful lights all over, seeing as lots of the Christmas decorations hadn't been removed yet, and the central park of the city was lit up with spotlights in the air since that was where the huge celebration for it would be taking place.

Obviously, none of them really wanted to deal with the huge crowds there, so they were going stay nice and comfy and most importantly _away_ from the huge gathering of people there. They could just as easily enjoy the fireworks show from here, after all.

"Man, I just realized I'm going to have to watch you guys be all couple-y in a few minutes," Crow pouted a few minutes before midnight, though it was pretty obvious from his tone that he was merely teasing them and didn't actually have a problem with it. Still, it was too perfect an opportunity to pass up to tease him back for once, and Judai shared a look with Yusei who eventually nodded with a sigh of acceptance seeing as Jack and Carly were currently preoccupied with their own conversation.

"Why don't you call Aki or something, you both can complain to each other about being single when midnight hits," Judai suggested as innocently as possible, though he clearly didn't do a good enough job at masking his smirk behind it - Crow's initially startled gape turned into one of suspicion, then embarrassed realization that he definitely _knew_.

He sent a little glare towards Yusei, who merely held up his hands and said, "Don't look at me, he figured it out on his own."

"Damn it, was it that obvious?" Crow sighed, turning back towards Judai in defeat.

"Not really, I'm just very observant," Judai grinned, patting him on the back, "Don't worry, your secret is safe with us. Rootin' for ya, though!"

"...Y'know what, fuck it- I'll call her," he decided, tapping all the right buttons on his phone to make it happen before he could psyche himself out of it, "I'm going to be blatantly ignoring the four of you in the meantime."

"Have fun!" Judai snickered, scooting his chair closer to Yusei's after as Crow turned his to face slightly away from the rest of them, "When do you think they'll finally get together?"

"Honestly? No idea, it all really depends on Aki," Yusei shrugged, smiling a little before continuing, "I believe there's a mutual interest there though, at least. She did seem oddly interested in what Crow was up to when we met with her the other day."

Judai hummed, hugging Yusei's arm and resting his head on his shoulder as he kept an eye on the time on his phone, smiling when Yusei leaned back into him and brought up his free hand to lightly thread through his hair. The last few minutes passed quickly, and soon enough they found themselves with only thirty seconds to go.

"Hey, Yusei?" Judai said quietly, making sure he had the other's attention, though he was sure it'd never left in the first place just like his hadn't left Yusei. He got a soft hum in response, and he tightened the grip he had on the other's hand (they'd threaded their fingers together as usual, but at this point it was so natural that he wasn't sure when it'd happened), continuing, "...I love you."

"I love you too, Judai," Yusei replied just as quietly, their foreheads pressing together as it felt like everything else melted into the background. In the distance he could vaguely hear the cheers all around, counting down the seconds left to the new year.

 _Ten, nine, eight, seven, six_...

"To the new year?" Judai breathed, fully captivated by the man in front of him as they stared into each other's eyes. He brushed a stray lock of hair behind the other's ear almost absentmindedly, wanting to see as much as he could of his lover's face.

 _Five, four, three two..._

"To the new year," Yusei mumbled back almost inaudibly, returning the favor with a light brush of his fingers across his cheek, taking him in with just as much fervor as he was.

 _One._

Cheers broke out below and fireworks started to explode in the sky, but neither of them heard it as they finally leaned together into the kiss, losing themselves entirely in each other's warmth as the clock hit midnight.

The next year would be even better than the last, and they'd get through it all together.


End file.
